GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

AN  AMERICAN  INTERPRETATION 


OSWALD  GARRISON  VILLARD 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT    LOS  ANGELES 


GERMANY  EMBATTLED 


GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

AN  AMERICAN  INTERPRETATION 


BY 

OSWALD  GARRISON  VILLARD 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

1915 


Copyright,  1915,  by 
Charles  Scribner'b  Sons 


Published  February,  1915 


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■    5 

11 
o 


4 


A* 


TO  MY  MOTHER 
IN  DEEPEST  GRATITUDE 


4 


C 


nor'*1 


21237  • 


Acknowledgment  is  hereby  made  to  the  Review  of 
Reviews,  the  North  American  Review,  and  Scribner's 
Magazine  for  kind  permission  to  reprint,  with 
alterations,  four  of  the  chapters  in  this  volume. 


PAGE 


CONTENTS 

I.  Germany  at  Bat 1 

II.  The  Two  Germants 30 

III.  German  Militarism  and  Democracy^    .    .  45 

IV.  The  Propaganda  in  America 74 

V.  The  Kaiser  and  the  War 104 

VI.  Imperialism  and  the  German  Parties  .     .  126 

VII.  The  United  States  and  the  Peace  Treaty  157 


GERMANY  AT  BAY 

A  WONDERFUL  quiet,  certainty,  and 
determination  unto  death  are  character- 
istic of  all  Germany  to-day,  and  even 
with  all  the  sorrow  we  are  undergoing  we  deeply 
feel  the  greatness  of  these  times.  God  bless 
our  arms!"  No  other  phrase  that  has  crossed 
the  ocean  more  completely  states  the  German 
frame  of  mind  when  the  mobilization  was  over 
and  the  empire  could  catch  its  breath  and  re- 
alize that  by  the  most  sudden,  as  well  as  the 
most  violent,  of  convulsions  the  Germany  and 
Europe  of  yesterday  had  gone  forever  —  that 
the  whole  world  had  changed  overnight. 

The  writer,  a  woman  of  rank  and  position, 
had  but  just  parted,  dry-eyed,  from  her  husband 
and  sixteen  soldier  relatives  of  a  family  which 
boasts  of  having  had  no  civilians  among  its 
members  since  1700.  She  had  no  word  of  re- 
gret;   only  a  prayer  that  she  might  keep  her 

1 


2  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

self-control  and  be  found  worthy  of  a  crisis 
which  had  revealed  the  entire  nation  so  united 
and  determined  as  to  wipe  out  in  a  moment  all 
differences  of  rank,  religion,  and  party.  To  de- 
scribe that  hour  of  self-abnegation  and  self- 
sacrifice  many  a  gifted  writer  and  man  of  affairs 
has  found  himself  utterly  at  a  loss.  The  thrill 
and  the  uplift  born  of  its  whole-souled  devotion 
wrenched  the  populace  loose  from  the  purely 
personal  considerations  of  life  and  stirred  them 
with  all  the  enthusiasm  which  comes  from  a 
readiness  to  die  for  a  common  cause.  The 
psychology  of  the  crowd  was  at  its  noblest 
height.  Even  the  foreign  spectators  caught  in 
the  sudden  swirl  of  vast,  loosened  reservoirs  of 
national  feeling  found  it  impossible  to  observe, 
save  with  awe,  conviction,  and  deep  emotion, 
this  profoundly  impressive  transformation  of  a 
people. 

To  the  Germans  their  cause  is  just,  their  con- 
science clear.  No  such  outburst  of  lofty  en- 
thusiasm for  Kaiser  and  country  would  have 
been  possible  had  there  been  anywhere  as  seri- 
ous doubts  as  troubled,  in  England,  Charles 
Trevelyan,  Ramsay  MacDonald,  John  Burns, 


GERMANY  AT  BAY  3 

and  Lord  Morlcy.     As  the  facts  were  presented 
to  the  German  people  there  seemed  to  be  no 
question  that  their  war-lord,  who  had  kept  the 
peace  for  the  twenty-six  years  of  his  reign,  had 
in  this  emergency  stood  for  peace  until  the  last 
moment,   moving   only   when   Russian   perfidy 
compelled  him  to.     It  was  necessary  to  strike 
first,  even  as  a  football  team  seeks  to  "get  the 
jump"   upon   its   opponents,   for   if   Russia   or 
France  were  to  deliver  a  blow  while  German 
mobilization   was   under  way   and   incomplete, 
the  country  would  be  in  the  position  of  an  old- 
time  frigate  raked  by  a  broadside  when  "taken 
aback"  and  helpless.     The  public  actually  trem- 
bled lest  the  Kaiser  hold  off  too  long,  and  when 
he   moved   he   seemed   to   them   of   Olympian 
stature.     His  language,   bombastic   as   it   may 
have  appeared  abroad,  was  pitched  to  the  key- 
note of  the  hour;    one  heard  for  the  first  time 
praise  of  him  as  wiser  Heber,  guter  Kaiser.     He 
stood  for  the  whole  people  when  he  opened  the 
war  session  of  the  Reichstag  and,  with  his  great 
sense  of  dramatic  values,  called  upon  its  leaders 
to  come  forward  and  place  their  hands  in  his  — 
even  the  Socialists,  whom  he  had  dubbed  trai- 


4  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

tors  to  the  country  in  a  speech  at  the  Krupp 
works  but  a  few  years  before.  All  this  at  the 
very  moment  that  battalions  in  every  town  and 
city  were  marching,  singing,  to  the  front  and 
Von  Emmich's  divisions,  without  waiting  for 
siege-guns  or  reservists,  were  victoriously  as- 
saulting Liege. 

With  this  profound  belief  in  the  righteousness 
of  its  cause,  the  nation  went  to  war  joyously 
exalted,  wondering  at  itself  and  its  power.  Its 
leaders  had  hoped,  they  said,  that  the  nation 
was  strong  and  sound  and  firmly  welded  to- 
gether in  all  classes  by  the  bands  of  union  forged 
under  the  stress  of  1870-71.  They  knew  it 
now  to  be  true.  They  had  not  been  sure  that 
what  is  considered  a  decadent  age  had  not  af- 
fected the  rugged  virtues;  that  prosperity, 
material  and  scientific  success,  had  not  some- 
what palsied  the  ability  to  think  in  terms  of  the 
nation.  The  wonderful  response  of  the  people 
filled  all  doubters  with  joy.  Not  only  was  it 
unnecessary  to  drive  a  single  conscript  to  the 
ranks,  but  two  millions  of  men  who  for  one 
reason  or  another  had  escaped  military  service, 
or  had  passed  beyond  it  by  reason  of  age,  vol- 


GERMANY  AT  BAY  5 

unteered,  begging  to  be  sent  to  the  front.  It 
is  no  wonder  that  the  national  motto,  "Gott 
Mil  Uns"  was  translated  by  Kaiser  and  people 
into  that  positive  affirmation  of  the  aid  of  the 
Deity  which  has  so  offended  the  world's  on- 
lookers. 

Yet,  when  the  nation  gazed  abroad  in  this 
moment  of  lofty  exaltation  and  found  that 
Italy,  her  ally,  held  back;  that  Belgium  also 
flung  herself  into  the  struggle  with  absolute  de- 
votion in  order  to  protect  her  territory;  that 
England  joined  the  enemies  to  east  and  west; 
that  Japan,  who  had  learned  her  military  art 
from  Germany,  obeyed  the  orders  of  England 
to  come  to  her  rescue  in  the  East;  that  the 
sentiment  of  the  United  States  and  other  neu- 
tral nations  was  wholly  against  her  —  it  was 
then  that  a  feeling  of  absolute  incredulity  gave 
way  to  absolute  anger.  It  was  the  English 
upon  whom  the  waves  of  their  wrath  broke  pri- 
marily. They  had  cut  the  cables  connecting 
Germany  with  the  outside  world;  they  it  was 
who  spread  abroad  the  false  stories  that  Liege 
held  out  until  August  17  and  that  the  Germans 
were  guilty  of  acts  of  brutality.     It  was  Eng- 


6  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

land  who  told  but  half  the  story  in  her  White 
Paper.  It  was  England  whose  abstention  from 
the  war  Sir  Edward  Grey  had  been  ready  to 
put  up  for  German  bidding  until,  driven  into 
a  corner,  he  refused  to  name  his  final  price. 

The  English  thus  appeared  before  the  Ger- 
man nation  as  traitorous  to  its  civilization  and 
culture,  because  its  statesmen  had  so  often  de- 
scribed their  people  as  "cousins  across  the 
Channel";  because  there  had  existed  the  warm- 
est cordiality  and  co-operation  between  the  sci- 
entific and  learned  men  of  both  countries;  be- 
cause they  were  of  kindred  racial  stock  and  in 
their  ideals  nearer  to  one  another  than  to  France 
or  Spain  or  to  the  Slavic  power  to  the  east.  As 
the  Germans  analyzed  the  situation,  their  joint 
type  of  civilization  was  threatened  with  com- 
plete submergence  by  the  brutal  Russian  forces 
which  England  had  opposed  at  every  turn  since 
the  Crimean  War,  against  whose  aspirations  in 
the  Near  East  the  England  of  Gladstone  had 
set  itself  like  the  Rock  of  Gibraltar;  the  Russia 
whose  institutions  are  the  exact  opposite  of 
those  of  liberal  England;  the  hands  of  whose 
Romanoffs  have  reeked  with  the  blood  not  only 


GERMANY  AT  BAY  7 

of  its  Jews  but  of  all  Russians  who  sought  liberty. 
Whatever  may  have  been  the  theories  of  the 
Bernhardis  and  the  extreme  militarists,  the  Ger- 
man people  as  a  whole  felt  such  a  kinship  to  the 
British,  with  whom  their  royal  family  is  so  closely 
allied,  that  it  was  almost  like  a  stab  in  the  back 
from  a  brother  when  England  declared  war. 

Did  the  English,  all  Germany  asked,  not 
comprehend  that  it  was  their  battle  which  she 
was  fighting?  To  Germany,  Austria  was  well 
within  her  rights  in  sending  the  ultimatum;  its 
language  was  no  harsher  than  the  circumstances 
warranted.  In  moving  to  avenge  the  archduke, 
Austria  did  no  more,  as  Ambassador  von  Bern- 
storff  puts  it,  than  the  United  States  would  have 
if  emissaries  of  Huerta  had  murdered  the  Vice- 
President  of  the  United  States.  Russia  should 
have  allowed  Austria  to  punish  Servia,  not  only 
for  the  murder  at  Sarajevo,  but  for  years  of  open 
anti-Austrian  agitation  bent  on  despoiling  her 
of  her  provinces;  that  Russia  moved  proved  to 
many  a  German  that  Russia  herself  was  behind 
the  Servian  agitation;  that  Servia  was  merely 
the  Czar's  cat's-paw.  When  Russia  acted  Ger- 
many was  compelled  to  follow  for  two  reasons: 


8  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

her  honor  as  an  ally  was  as  much  involved  as 
England's  was  engaged  to  France  by  the  secret 
understanding,  and  she  could  not  permit  mobili- 
zation on  her  boundary,  since  her  chief  hope 
was  to  dispose  of  France  before  the  Russian 
masses  could  be  drawn  up  at  her  frontier.  The 
possibility  of  war  on  two  frontiers  has  never 
been  lost  sight  of  in  Berlin;  there  has  not  been 
a  day  since  1880  that  the  German  General  Staff 
has  not  studied  and  restudied  its  plan  for  de- 
fending the  nation  against  a  simultaneous 
French  and  Russian  attack;  there  has  not  been 
a  day  during  this  period  that  the  German  army 
has  not  been  confident  of  its  ability  to  [de- 
feat both  enemies.  But  to  defeat  them  and 
England,  too?  It  cannot  be  denied  that  for 
the  moment  even  military  Germany  was  stag- 
gered. 

But  only  for  a  moment.  Then,  with  a  quick 
"The  more  enemies  the  more  honor,"  the  nation 
pressed  on,  easily  persuading  itself  that  the  real 
underlying  issue  was  not  only  Russia's  position 
—  testified  to  in  the  White  Paper  by  Sir  Edward 
Grey  —  that  Austrian  domination  of  Servia 
would  be  intolerable  to  her,  but  Russia's  deter- 


GERMANY  AT  BAY  0 

mination  to  undermine  first  Austria  and  then 
Germany  for  her  own  aggrandizement.  For  a 
few  days  the  air  was  full  of  this  ery  of  Slavic- 
peril,  that  Germany  stood  alone  against  the 
Huns  —  as  Western  culture  had  once  fought  to 
keep  the  Turks  out  of  Europe  —  until  the  ques- 
tion of  Belgian  neutrality  thrust  this  into  the 
background.  That  some  Germans  realize  that 
her  moral  position  would  be  far  stronger  to-day 
had  she  left  Belgium  untouched  is  deducible 
not  merely  from  the  chancellor's  confession  that 
she  had  violated  a  law  of  nations;  it  is  admitted 
frankly  by  a  few,  like  Professor  Paul  Natorp, 
of  the  University  of  Marburg.  Yet  even  he 
has  convinced  himself,  like  all  Germany,  that 
the  French  would  have  marched  in  with  the 
consent  of  England  and  of  Belgium  herself  if 
the  Germans  had  not;  they  are  the  more  certain 
of  this  now  that  the  Germans  have  found  the 
telltale  papers  in  Brussels  showing  that  the 
British  were  plotting  with  the  Belgians  what 
they  should  do  if  Belgium  were  invaded.  That 
French  troops  and  officers  were  actually  cross- 
ing the  boundaries  when  the  Germans  were, 
and  that  some  were  already  in  Liege,  Namur, 


10  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

and  Antwerp,  is  believed  from  one  corner  of 
Germany  to  another. 

But,  even  if  this  were  to  be  disproved,  the 
Germans  as  a  whole  are  behind  the  chancellor 
in  his  belief  that  to  invade  Belgium  was  justi- 
fied by  that  direst  necessity  that  knows  no  law. 
It  was  the  only  way  to  protect  their  own  unforti- 
fied Belgian  frontier.  Why  could  not  the  Bel- 
gians have  realized  this  and  spared  themselves 
all  that  they  have  suffered,  by  letting  the  Ger- 
mans inarch  quietly  through?  The  Kaiser's 
troops  would  have  disturbed  or  injured  no  man; 
they  would  have  made  good  any  injury  done  and 
paid  handsomely  as  they  went.  For  the  rest 
of  the  world  to  cry  out  against  what  happened 
as  a  result  of  Belgian  folly,  in  the  manner  that 
it  has,  passeth  understanding  from  their  point 
of  view.  For  England  to  protest  seems  to  Ger- 
many the  height  of  hypocrisy.  England  stand- 
ing for  the  rights  of  small  nations  —  the  same 
England  that  wiped  out  the  Boer  republics; 
that  consented  shamefully  to  Russia's  crushing 
out  of  Persia;  that  connived  at  France's  swallow- 
ing of  Morocco  when  the  ink  on  the  treaty  of 
Algeciras  guaranteeing  Moroccan  integrity  was 


GERMANY  AT  BAY  11 

scarcely  dry !  Merely  to  state  the  case  against 
"perfidious  Albion"  was  to  prove  its  shameless- 
ness. 

Hence  the  Germans  have  convinced  them- 
selves that  England's  seizing  on  Belgian  neu- 
trality as  a  reason  for  war  was  but  the  hollowest 
of  shams.  Everything  that  is  now  disclosed 
but  proves  in  Berlin  a  long-planned  conspiracy 
to  ruin  Germany  because  of  her  success  in  the 
world.  It  is  envy  that  is  at  the  bottom  of  it  all, 
a  wicked,  criminal  envy  because  German  ships 
are  filling  the  seas  and  German  commerce  is 
growing  by  leaps  and  bounds  and  her  merchants 
are  capturing  the  marts  of  the  world  hitherto 
the  private  property  of  John  Bull.  It  is  all  so 
clear  and  plain  that  Germany  could  not  under- 
stand why  the  rest  of  the  world  could  not  see 
it,  too.  "But  wait,"  she  cried,  "until  the  Ger- 
man side  gets  out  to  the  rest  of  the  world,  then 
its  moral  opinion  will  turn  to  our  aid."  Mean- 
while, the  question  of  Belgian  neutrality  went 
into  the  background  like  the  Slavic  peril;  the 
stake  was  now  the  preserving  of  German  Kulfur 
(not  culture,  but  civilization)  from  all  the  world, 
if  need  be. 


U  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 


II 

German  Kultur !  What  this  means  is  the 
riddle  of  the  hour  to  many  who  honestly  seek 
to  fathom  the  Teuton  point  of  view.  Is  there 
a  German  "culture"  or  civilization  superior  to 
any  other?  And  is  that  Kultur  typified  by 
autocratic  Prussian  militarism  which  slashes 
lame  cobblers  and  bends  the  nation  to  its  own 
imperious  will?  Is  it  typified  by  the  Kaiser  in 
his  war-lord  moods,  as  when  he  bade  the  Ger- 
man troops  departing  for  China  carve  their  way 
to  Pekin  with  ferocity?  "I  have,"  he  said,  "to 
re-establish  peace  with  the  sword  and  take  ven- 
geance in  a  manner  never  before  seen  by  the 
world.  .  .  .  The  German  flag  has  been  insulted 
and  the  German  Empire  treated  with  contempt. 
This  demands  exemplary  punishment  and  ven- 
geance. ...  If  you  close  with  the  enemy,  re- 
member this:  Spare  nobody.  Make  no  prison- 
ers. Use  your  weapons  so  that  for  a  thousand 
years  hence  no  Chinaman  will  dare  look  askance 
at  any  German.  Open  the  way  for  civilization 
once  more." 


GERMANY  AT  BAY  13 

Or  when  he  speaks  of  divine  right,  preaches 
the  doctrine  that  might  makes  right,  and  de- 
nounces three  millions  of  his  countrymen  as 
traitors  because  they  wish  to  reconstitute  the 
nation?  Does  it  mean  the  Germany  of  the 
university  professors  like  Treitschke,  who  de- 
mand not  only  that  Germany  shall  have  "her 
place  in  the  sun"  but  that  she  shall  aggressively 
fight  for  it;  the  professors  who  dream  of  over- 
sea dominion,  of  making  Germany  the  Rome  of 
the  twentieth  century,  who  are  so  certain  of  the 
superiority  of  what  they  consider  German  civi- 
lization as  to  be  ready  to  impose  it  upon  all  the 
world  ? 

Or  does  this  word  Kultur  stand  for  that  other 
Germany  that  all  the  world  has  come  to  love 
and  praise,  the  Germany  of  kindliness  and 
friendliness,  of  learned  men  to  whom  tens  of 
thousands  of  Americans  owe  a  never-ending 
gratitude;  the  Germany  of  poetry  and  music, 
with  her  rare  love  of  nature;  the  Germany  of 
humanitarian  ideals  that  has  led  all  the  world 
in  her  efforts  to  solve  social  problems,  ele- 
vated civic  administration  to  the  rank  of  a  sci- 
ence and  builded  the  city  beautiful,  while  caring 


14  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

for  her  poor  and  her  aged  under  laws  all  advanced 
nations  are  copying? 

To  Germany  herself  what  her  Kultur  stands 
for  is  the  spirit  behind  both  of  these  divergent 
Gerinanys,  but  not  that  which  produces  auto- 
cratic or  militarist  excesses;  for  it  signifies  the 
supreme  expression  of  her  life  as  a  nation  — 
the  youngest  of  nations.  In  her  brief  existence 
she  has  made  more  positive  contributions  to 
knowledge  and  world-advancement  than  any 
other  nation  in  the  same  period.  At  all  times 
Kultur  stands  for  wonderful  discipline  not  only 
in  the  army  but  in  party,  church,  and  state,  to- 
gether with  equally  marvellous  efficiency.  To 
this  must  be  added  an  idealism  amazing  in  a 
practical  people  which  worships  the  expert  and 
has  wedded  industry  to  science.  On  the  one 
hand  there  is  a  deep,  warm  sentimentalism  and 
on  the  other  a  union  of  minute  knowledge  and 
of  comprehensive  grasp  of  fundamental  prin- 
ciples. Finally,  there  must  not  be  denied  as 
another  component  part  a  growing  belief  in  the 
necessity  and  glory  of  armaments;  a  demand 
that  the  nation  be  allowed  to  play  a  role  as  a 
world-power  even  as  Spain  and  England  in  their 


GERMANY  AT  BAY  15 

times.  Something  of  a  composite  like  this  it  is 
which  Germany  is  defending  to-day  as  her  con- 
tribution to  civilization,  as  even  more  worthy  of 
preservation  than  the  precise  framework  of  gov- 
ernment under  which  her  citizens  live;  for  it 
men  and  women  are  giving  freely  of  all  that  is 
most  precious  to  them. 

But  as  they  give  they  suddenly  find  them- 
selves portrayed  as  barbarians,  as  savages  with- 
out reverence  for  the  very  things  that  play  so 
deep  a  part  in  their  lives,  and  they  are  aghast. 
How  is  it  that  they  can  be  so  misunderstood? 
Is  all  the  world  poisoned  against  them?  Can 
such  frightful  lies  triumph?  They  read  them 
on  every  hand  —  the  crassest  falsities,  chiefly 
from  English  sources,  since  London  is  not  only 
the  greatest  financial  exchange  but  the  world's 
clearing-house  for  news.  They,  a  united  people, 
learn  from  the  English  press  that  the  Kaiser 
had  deliberately  ordered  every  Socialist  member 
of  the  Reichstag  shot;  that  Socialist  mobs  were 
shot  down  in  the  streets  of  Berlin;  that  the 
people  who  rose  in  patriotic  exaltation  never 
equalled  in  modern  times  were  driven  unwill- 
ingly to  the  front !     Their  Kaiser,  beloved  by 


16  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

great  multitudes,  is  portrayed  as  a  wholesale 
murderer  who  plunged  all  Europe  into  bloody 
war  when  he  could  have  prevented  it;  they 
themselves  are  pictured  as  slaves  of  a  military 
cabal  which  plans  the  subjugation  of  France 
and  England,  the  destruction  of  liberalism  and 
the  governing  of  Europe  by  an  intolerable  iron 
rule.  They  are  told  abroad  that  their  soldiers 
are  vandals  who  violate  women,  mutilate  little 
children,  murder  in  cold  blood,  and  not  merely 
destroy  private  property  but  priceless  works  of 
art  never  to  be  replaced  —  the  common  herit- 
age of  mankind.  In  brief,  they  are  accused  of 
the  very  things  of  which  they  accuse,  under 
oath,  the  invading  Russians  who  in  one  East 
Prussian  district  alone  are  charged  with  three 
hundred  and  fifty  murders  of  non-combatant 
men  and  women  and  children. 

The  world,  they  suddenly  find,  believes  any- 
thing of  them  —  of  them  who  have  gone  forth 
to  war  in  the  spirit  of  the  crusader,  not  hirelings, 
like  the  British  regulars,  but  a  most  democratic 
army  of  the  people,  united  with  a  new  spirit  of 
brotherliness  to  their  comrades  in  the  ranks  from 
all   walks   in   life,   from   princes   to   'prentices. 


GERMANY  AT  BAY  17 

There  are  fathers  and  brothers,  yes,  grandfa- 
thers, in  every  regiment,  men  of  years,  position, 
title,  learning,  and  high  standing  in  every  com- 
pany, drawn  together,  not  for  plunder,  not  by 
lust  of  war,  but  to  save  their  country,  and  all 
bound  together  by  a  discipline  never  approached 
by  any  other  army.  And  of  these  it  is  said  that 
they  are  like  the  Sioux  Indians !  Nothing  to 
Germans  could  be  worse  than  these  slanders 
save  what  they  themselves  tell  of  the  Belgians, 
of  furies  in  skirts  putting  out  with  corkscrews 
the  eyes  of  helpless  German  wounded  and  pour- 
ing boiling  water  upon  them;  of  ununiformed 
citizens  shooting  out  of  cellars  and  from  attic 
windows,  and  rising  treacherously,  as  at  Lou- 
vain,  when  led  by  priests  and  professors.  Noth- 
ing surprises  them  more  than  that  any  one 
should  look  upon  the  burning  of  Louvain  as  any- 
thing but  a  just  punishment  for  acts  directly 
contrary  to  the  laws  of  war.  When  their  own 
villages  have  been  shot  to  pieces  and  burned 
by  Russians  without  its  creating  an  outcry  in 
America,  they  cannot  see  why  the  burning  of 
Belgian  villages,  the  natural  result  of  shelling 
troops  out  of  them,  should  seem  anything  else 


18  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

than  an  ordinary  incident  of  war,  the  hell  that 
is  war  that  they,  under  their  Prussian  generals, 
propose  to  make  so  terrible  a  hell  by  legitimate 
severity  that  their  enemies  will  soon  submit. 

The  fact  that  the  Belgians  lied  to  all  the  world 
about  Liege,  and  similar  misrepresentations,  the 
Germans  are  ready  to  bear  with  as  part  of  the 
game.  But  not  the  calumnies  of  their  troops, 
as  if  they  were  Bulgarians  or  Serbs  or  Greek 
marauders.  That  is  the  last  straw,  and  the  head- 
lines, "Wir  Barbaren"  "Wir  Unmenschen"  now 
appearing  in  the  German  press  over  records 
of  British  and  French  prisoners'  appreciation  of 
their  kindly  treatment,  testify  to  the  hurt  in- 
flicted. And  so  we  have  the  German  professors 
spurning  their  British  decorations  and  academic 
honors,  and  the  terrible  prospect  that  between 
these  two  Teuton  nations,  which  ought  to  be 
the  best  of  friends,  there  will  exist  at  the  end  of 
the  war,  whatever  the  outcome,  a  bitterness 
and  a  hatred  beside  which  the  latent  hostility 
of  French  and  Germans  since  1870  will  seem 
mere  childish  irritation.  The  Germans  simply 
cannot  understand  when  they  hear  that  Eng- 
lishmen of  German  names  are  changing  them 


GERMANY  AT  BAY  19 

because,  as  in  one  recorded  case,  they  say  that 
the  Germans  have  been  carrying  on  war  "con- 
trary to  every  dictate  of  humanity." 

Conscious  of  their  rectitude,  clear  as  to  the 
injury  done  them,  certain  of  the  triumph  of 
their  arms,  their  faces  are  now  turned  to  the 
neutrals,  but  particularly  to  the  great  North 
American  republic  where  dwell  so  many  of 
German  birth.  With  German  love  of  thorough- 
ness and  system  they  have  formed  committees 
for  the  purpose  of  presenting  the  truth  abroad. 
They  have  showered  every  attention  upon  re- 
turning Americans  in  the  passionate  belief  that 
they  will  be  ambassadors  of  good  will  and  re- 
porters of  the  right.  Citizens  everywhere  are 
besought  for  names  of  friends  or  relatives  in 
America  to  whom  literature  may  be  sent,  in 
full  faith  that  the  United  States,  so  ill  treated 
by  Great  Britain  in  177C,  1812,  and  during  the 
Civil  War,  will  particularly  express  its  horror  at 
the  policy  which  has  sent  against  their  Kultur 
hordes  of  black,  brown,  and  yellow  troops  from 
Africa,  India,  and  Asia. 


20  GERMANY   EMBATTLED 

III 

It  may,  therefore,  be  about  the  hardest  blow 
of  all  when  Germany  realizes  that  her  represen- 
tations of  the  facts  as  she  sees  them,  and  her 
contentions,  have  from  the  first  been  freely 
printed  in  the  American  press,  together  with  the 
views  of  Dernburg,  Miinsterberg,  Francke,  Von 
Jagemann,  Ktihnemann,  Burgess,  Sloane,  Rid- 
der,  Hexamer,  and  Ambassador  Bernstorff,  but 
that  the  American  public  as  a  whole  continues 
unconvinced.  The  United  States  remains  firm 
in  its  belief  that  the  responsibility  for  this  ter- 
rible misfortune  which  has  overtaken  humanity 
rests  primarily  with  Austria  and  next  with  the 
Kaiser.  "The  final  help,"  says  the  London 
Times,  "is  the  mighty  duty  of  America."  What 
Germany,  in  its  eagerness  for  that  "final  help," 
does  not  yet  appreciate  is  that  the  unfavorable 
American  judgment  was  based  on  consideration 
of  the  facts,  and  particularly  of  those  relating 
to  the  invasion  of  Belgium.  Our  good  opinion 
was  forfeited  by  Germany  when  the  Kaiser  re- 
jected Sir  Edward  Grey's  offers  to  assure  peace, 
when  the  "  scrap-of -paper "   incident  occurred, 


GERMANY  AT  BAY  21 

and  when  the  imperial  chancellor  exalted  the 
law  of  necessity  above  the  law  of  nations. 

Berlin  must  learn  that  this  judgment  cannot 
be  altered  either  by  fuller  appreciation  of  that 
thrilling  uprising  of  the  Kaiser's  subjects  or  of 
their  unanimous  belief  in  the  justice  of  their 
cause  or  of  their  readiness  to  die  for  it.  There 
are  plenty  of  American  men  and  women  who 
recall  the  wonderful  rallying  about  Lincoln  in 
1861.  "Who  that  saw  it,"  wrote  James  Russell 
Lowell,  "will  ever  forget  that  enthusiasm  of 
loyalty  for  the  flag,  and  for  what  the  flag  sym- 
bolized, which  twenty-six  years  ago  swept  all 
the  country's  forces  of  thought  and  sentiment, 
of  memory  and  hope,  into  the  grasp  of  its  over- 
mastering torrent?'1  In  France  to-day  we  are 
witnessing  a  less-exploited  but  similarly  moving 
uprising  of  the  people,  actuated  by  the  profound 
belief  that  it  is  the  very  existence  of  France 
which  is  being  fought  for  as  well  as  the  "giving 
to  the  whole  world  liberty  to  breathe,  to  think, 
to  progress."  But  waves  of  national  sentiment, 
however  they  may  bring  tears  to  the  eyes  and 
quicken  the  heart's  beat,  prove  nothing  in  them- 
selves. 


22  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

The  same  is  true  of  the  question  of  the  atroci- 
ties. If  the  United  States  did  or  did  not  be- 
lieve all  of  them,  or  believed  none  of  them  — 
even  if  it  approved  and  did  not  profoundly 
disapprove  the  dropping  of  bombs  without 
warning  into  defenseless  cities,  the  exacting  of 
ransoms,  the  holding  of  unarmed  citizens  as 
hostages,  the  burning  of  cities  in  revenge  for  in- 
dividual treachery  —  its  final  opinion  would  not 
be  affected  by  the  presence  or  absence  of  these 
horrible  phases  of  war.  War,  it  knows,  lets 
loose  every  evil  passion,  inflicts  every  pain  and 
torture  known  to  man.  But  all  of  this,  as 
thoughtful  Germany  must  soon  come  to  see, 
can  have  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the  fun- 
damental moral  issues  involved,  the  right  and 
wrong  of  the  struggle,  any  more  than  does  the 
question  of  England's  consistency  or  her  atti- 
tude in  the  past  toward  the  Boer  republics, 
Persia,  and  Morocco,  or  our  own  "water-cure" 
torturing  in  the  Philippines.  Regret  that  the 
German  name  is  at  present  under  a  cloud  the 
United  States  will;  but  no  amount  of  evidence 
that  these  accusations  are  slanderous  will  achieve 
the  real  purpose  of  the  German  propaganda  in 


GERMANY  AT  BAY  23 

America  —  the   turning   of   the   United    States 
against  the  Allies. 

In  the  South  African  war  American  sympa- 
thies were  chiefly  with  the  Boers;  in  the  Man- 
churian  campaign  overwhelmingly  against  Rus- 
sia. If  sentiment  to-day  favors  the  Allies,  it 
is  plainly  not  because  of  any  thick-and-thin 
friendship  for  England  or  for  the  Czar's  despotic 
government.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  had  France 
and  England  violated  Belgian  neutrality  and 
entered  Germany  by  her  unfortified  frontier, 
American  public  sentiment  would  have  felt  just 
as  outraged  by  the  wrong  done  by  Frenchmen 
and  Englishmen.  The  truth  is  that  the  Ger- 
man General  Staff  knew  that  the  easiest  road 
into  France  lay  through  Belgium,  and  they  took 
it.  But  one  may  pay  too  high  a  price  even  for 
the  easiest  road,  and  the  price  paid  by  Germany 
was  war  with  Belgium,  England,  and  Japan, 
and  the  final  forfeiture  of  public  opinion  every- 
where. The  laying  waste  of  Belgium,  be  it  a 
legitimate  incident  of  war  or  not,  has  stirred 
the  world  to  its  utmost  depths.  Americans 
cannot  but  believe,  as  they  pour  out  sympathy 
and   aid   to  this  stricken   people,   that  it  was 


24  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

wickedly  unnecessary,  and  have,  therefore,  but 
restricted  patience  for  German  appeals. 

The  sober  second  thought  in  Germany,  of 
which  one  finds  traces  in  Professor  Natorp's 
articles,  can  but  reflect  ere  long  upon  the  infi- 
nitely stronger  position  Germany  would  be  in, 
even  were  the  steps  leading  to  the  conflict  the 
same,  had  it  fought  a  defensive  war.  Many 
defeats  will  probably  be  necessary  to  shatter 
German  faith  in  the  divine  wisdom  of  its  Gen- 
eral Staff,  whose  officers  had  decided  for  years 
past  that  the  best  policy  was  that  quick  over- 
whelming of  France  which  so  nearly  succeeded. 
The  time  must  come,  however,  when  Germans 
will  wish  with  all  their  hearts  that  by  keeping 
out  of  Belgium  they  had  saved  themselves  three 
or  four  opponents  and  thereby  held  in  some 
degree  the  sympathy  of  the  United  States. 
The  position  of  the  German  and  Allied  armies 
at  this  writing  shows  a  truth  we  had  begun  to 
suspect  by  the  close  of  our  Civil  War,  that  well- 
trained  troops  behind  breastworks  are  a  better 
means  of  defense  than  the  best  forts.  No  one 
can  be  found  to  believe  that  if  Germany's  sol- 
dier millions  had  merely  lined  their  own  fron- 


GERMANY  AT  BAY  2.5 

tiers  and  waged  a  defensive  campaign  behind 
forts,  or  trenches  where  there  were  no  forts, 
France  and  Russia,  fighting  alone,  could  have 
made  headway  against  her.  The  horrible  losses 
of  the  raid  into  France  would  have  been  avoided 
and  the  control  of  the  sea  would  indubitably  be 
hers.  There  would  have  been  no  charges  of  van- 
dalism or  soldier  misconduct  to  combat  and  to 
deplore.  Plainly  a  Bismarck  was  needed,  not 
only  on  the  diplomatic  side,  but  on  the  military 
side  as  well.  Upon  the  General  Staff  the  blame 
for  this  utterly  mistaken  policy  will  eventually 
rest. 

By  this  it  is  not  meant  to  imply  that  even  in 
this  supposititious  case  Americans  would  have 
been  altogether  on  the  side  of  Germany.  For 
all  our  recent  imperialistic  excursions  into  Cen- 
tral and  South  America  and  the  Philippines, 
despite  our  dangerously  large  navy,  the  spirit  of 
our  people  is  still  as  opposed  to  great  military  es- 
tablishments as  in  the  first  days  of  the  Republic. 
As  ex-President  Eliot  has  put  it:  "The  reliance 
on  military  force  as  the  foundation  of  true  na- 
tional greatness  seems  to  thinking  Americans 
erroneous,   and   in  the  long  run  degrading  to 


26  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

a  Christian  nation."  It  is  probably  true,  as 
German  speakers  contend,  that  Bernhardi's 
book  no  more  represents  the  real  heart  and 
mind  of  Germany  than  the  vaporings  of  Con- 
gressman Hobson  and  the  belligerent  tracts  of 
the  pseudo-" Lieutenant-General"  Homer  Lea 
really  reflect  the  sentiment  of  the  common  peo- 
ple of  America.  To  accept  the  teachings  of 
books  like  these  is  to  admit  that  mankind  is 
well  along  on  its  return  to  the  stone  age.  But 
every  military  system  produces  men  who  wor- 
ship war  as  war,  believe  it  to  be  the  normal 
state  of  man,  and  assert  that  there  is  no  safety 
for  any  people  but  to  make  a  soldier  of  every 
citizen.  The  German  army  has  them  in 
plenty,  and,  however  democratic  it  may  be  in 
its  ranks,  it  is  controlled  by  a  clique  of  profes- 
sional soldiers  who,  standing  quite  apart  from 
the  aspirations  of  the  plain  people,  have,  as 
now  appears,  made  great  strides  toward  domi- 
nating the  nobler  Germany  and  giving  to  its 
foreign  policy  an  aggressive  jingo  note.  Victory 
now  would  enormously  strengthen  the  hands  of 
the  Treitschkes  and  Bernhardis,  with  whom  the 
Crown  Prince  seems  in  such  complete  sympathy. 


GERMANY  AT  BAY  27 

No  one  can  confute  this  merely  by  asserting 
that  this  is  not  a  war  of  the  Kaiser  but  of  the 
whole  German  people,  or  by  pointing  out  that 
in  the  haste  to  serve  the  Fatherland  the  two 
Germanys  are  now  as  one.  In  war-time  there 
is  always  the  demand  that  all  differences  of 
opinion  be  sunk  and  consciences  stifled. 

No  true  friend  of  Germany  in  the  United 
States  can  wish  for  her  any  success  that  will 
convince  the  masses  of  her  people  that  true  na- 
tional greatness  depends  solely  on  military 
power.  To  do  so  means  positive  infidelity  to 
our  own  institutions  —  and  to  humanity.  If 
there  are  those  who  preach  this  doctrine  that 
true  national  worth  is  measured  by  the  relative 
perfection  of  a  military  machine  and  the  num- 
ber of  battleships,  they  sojourn  among  us  but 
are  not  of  us.  They  are  ignorant  as  to  a  chief 
teaching  of  the  Republic;  they  are  grossly  un- 
true to  the  Germans  of  '48  who  fled  to  us  when 
the  Prussian  militarists  blew  to  pieces  that  noble 
uprising  and  ended  that  brave  if  hopeless  de- 
mand for  true  democracy.  Whether  the  Ger- 
mans, blinded  by  the  Sturm  und  Drang  they  are 
now  passing  through,  can  perceive  it  or  not, 


28  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

German  victory  would  spell  the  strengthening 
of  absolutism  everywhere  and  of  its  bond-servant 
militarism.  It  would  mean  the  subordination 
of  the  nobler  Germany  to  the  reactionary.  It 
would  mean  not  a  Germany  to  be  beloved  and 
honored  of  all  thinking  men,  but  a  Germany  to 
be  feared  and  dreaded,  with  all  liberal  tenden- 
cies crushed  within  her.  Her  chief  aspiration 
would  then,  perhaps,  be  fresh  territories  to  con- 
quer and  certainly  more  and  more  sacrifices  for 
the  military  machine.  Against  this  possibility 
Americans  must  protest  the  louder  the  more 
they  are  indebted  to  Germany,  the  more  they 
admire  her,  the  more  they  pity  her,  the  greater 
the  anguish  they  feel  that  the  very  existence  of 
this  nation  of  Kant,  Goethe,  Schiller,  Wagner, 
and  all  the  rest  of  its  really  great  men  has  been 
recklessly  staked  in  a  war  utterly  unnecessary, 
about  whose  real  causes  no  man  is  clear.  The 
more  he  loves  Germany  the  more  the  real  Ameri- 
can must  pray  that  she  be  saved  from  the  dan- 
gerous forces  within  her  which  are  threatening 
to  overwhelm  what  is  best  in  her.  She  must  be 
shown  that  what  is  going  on  to-day  is  a  denial 
of  Christianity  and  nothing  else.     Her  splen- 


GERMANY  AT  BAY  29 

did  abilities,  her  powers  of  organization,  her 
sentiment,  her  idealism,  the  world  needs  for  the 
prevention  of  wars  and  not  for  the  deification 
of  the  war  spirit. 

Americans  who  believe  in  self-government 
and  democracy  can  take  but  one  stand  against 
absolutism  and  arbitrary  power.  They  trust 
that  as  a  result  of  this  war  thrones  will  every- 
where come  crashing  to  the  ground.  In  Ger- 
many we  must  hope  for  a  reawakening  of  the 
spirit  of  1848  which  will  recognize  at  least 
wherein  lies  the  great  power  of  the  United  States 
in  this  hour.  It  rests  not  in  the  number  of  our 
battleships  nor  in  the  size  of  our  army,  but  in 
our  moral  power;  in  the  vigor  of  our  demo- 
cratic institutions,  in  the  fact  that  this  country 
loves  justice,  truth,  and  right;  that  the  judg- 
ments of  its  common  people  are,  in  the  long  run, 
profoundly  wise;  that  that  judgment  to-day  is 
swayed  neither  by  entangling  alliances,  nor  by 
the  lust  of  conquest,  nor  by  the  blasphemous 
doctrine  that  God  is  on  the  side  of  the  largest 
battalions.  If  America  is  to-day,  in  this  world 
crisis,  the  court  of  last  instance,  it  is  judging 
honestly  on  the  facts  and  the  facts  alone. 


II 

THE  TWO  GERMANYS 

WHAT  attitude  conscientious  German- 
Americans  should  take  toward  the 
war  of  nations  was  from  the  first  a 
cause  of  no  end  of  heart-break.  For  one  thing, 
there  was  no  Carl  Schurz  to  lead  the  way  in 
this  emergency  by  one  of  those  clear-cut  ethical 
analyses  with  which  he  did  so  much  to  sim- 
plify and  to  clarify  difficult  political  problems 
for  our  countrymen  of  German  birth  or  par- 
entage, as  well  as  for  native  Americans,  plenty 
of  whom,  for  one  reason  or  another,  find  them- 
selves in  debt  to  German  learning  or  German 
kindliness.  Should  they  imitate  the  bulk  of  the 
German-American  multitudes  who  are  shout- 
ing, "Germany,  right  or  wrong!"  and  waive 
all  effort  to  place  the  blame  by  some  such  con- 
science salve  as  the  phrase,  "The  Kaiser  has 
sources  of  information  not  open  to  the  public, 
and  knew  he  had  to  strike  or  be  overwhelmed"  ? 

30 


THE  TWO  GERM  AN  YS  51 

There  are  plenty  of  other  reasons  given  in 
defense  of  the  Kaiser,  as  we  have  seen.     He  is  a 
new  St.  George  slaying  the  Slavic  dragon.     He 
himself  —  so  it  is  solemnly  alleged  —  is  respon- 
sible for  those  extraordinary  conquests  on  the 
seas  and  in  the  marts  of  the  world  which  have 
aroused  British  jealousy,  and  he  must  be  trusted 
to  know  how  to  protect  what  he  has  created, 
and  how  to   insure  still   greater  conquests   of 
trade.     Is  he  not  the  true  protector  of  Ger- 
many's faith  in  herself,  of  her  intellectual  as- 
pirations, and  of  the  superb  idealism  of  his  peo- 
ple?    Is  it  not  patent  that  every  man's  hand 
has  been  raised  against  Germany  because,  as 
the  Kaiser  puts  it,  God  has  been  with  her  —  she 
has  prospered  exceedingly  and  the  wicked  now 
rejoice   that  evil   days   have   come   upon  her? 
And  should  not  German-Americans  rally  to  her 
support  even  though  they  are  loyal  to  the  United 
States,  even  though  her  diplomacy  has  been  at 
fault  —  even  if  the  mistake  in  attacking  Bel- 
gium   was    a    terrible   one?     Right   or   wrong, 
should  not  one  stand  up  for  the  Fatherland  at 
this  distance,  just  as  the  masses  are  called  upon 
to  in  every  country  when  it  plunges  into  war? 


32  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

What  intensifies  the  difficulty  of  the  thought- 
ful German-American  is  that  there  are  those 
two  Germanys  to  whose  blending  are  due  her 
Kultur  and  the  animating  spirit  of  the  nation. 
However  much  some  may  deny,  in  view  of  the 
attitude  of  the  German  professors  and  the  sub- 
mission to  the  war-craze  of  the  Social-Demo- 
crats, that  there  are  two  Germanys,  they  exist 
none  the  less,  even  though  temporarily  welded 
together  by  the  war,  and  they  will  be  in  evi- 
dence whatever  the  outcome.  In  a  recent  Ger- 
man gathering  in  New  York  there  was  but  one 
voice  of  indignation  at  the  aspersions  upon 
Germany  and  her  motives;  suddenly  in  a  lull 
a  voice  was  heard  to  say:  "But  when  it's  all 
over  we  must  drive  out  our  Junker."  That 
one  word  stands  for  the  reactionary  forces  in 
the  empire,  for  those  who  believe  in  the  divine 
right  of  rulers,  in  the  mailed  fist,  in  government 
by  aristocracy,  in  might  as  against  right,  and 
have  taught  the  doctrine  that  peace  can  only 
be  assured  if  all  the  nations  be  armed  to  the 
teeth.  Its  adherents  are  those  who  see  in  the 
Waffenrock  a  garment  before  which  the  public 
must  bow.     They  uphold  the  officers  who  run 


THE  TWO  GERMANYS  33 

civilians  through  at  some  fancied  insult,  and 
applaud  those  wearers  of  the  uniform  who  re- 
sort to  the  duel,  long  since  outlawed  by  the  en- 
lightened sentiment  of  the  world.  The  Junker 
and  their  allies  among  the  privileged  are  the 
Germans  who  intrench  in  power  the  ennobled 
and  enriched  classes;  who  are  without  trust  in 
the  people  and  are  utterly  opposed  to  the  ex- 
tension of  democracy,  relying  for  aid  upon  a 
subservient  bureaucracy.  It  is  they  who  de- 
mand protective  tariffs,  who  place  such  diffi- 
culties in  the  way  of  free  importation  of  food  as 
to  make  it  practically  impossible  for  thousands 
upon  thousands  of  Germans  to  taste  any  meat 
save  horseflesh.  They  are  the  all-powerful  sup- 
porters of  the  Prussian  Government  in  its  re- 
fusal to  remove  the  inequalities  among  voters 
within  its  electorate  —  against  which  one  hun- 
dred thousand  Prussians  protested  two  years 
ago  on  a  single  day  —  for  they  are  in  power  by 
reason  of  those  inequalities. 

Incidentally  they  are  of  the  type  that  gives 
so  much  offense  to  the  rest  of  the  world.  They 
are  arrogant  and  supercilious,  and  frankly  with- 
out faith  in  anything  save  the  power  of  the 


34  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

sword.  It  is  they  who  have  dictated  the  for- 
eign policy  which  has  made  friends  of  prac- 
tically nobody.  It  is  they  who,  under  Bis- 
marck's leadership,  originally  entered  in  1882 
the  game  of  taking  the  lands  of  backward  races, 
in  which  all  their  neighbors  and  we  ourselves 
have  indulged.  It  is  they  who  give  the  utterly 
false  impression  that  all  Germany  has  been 
bent  on  conquering  where  it  could.  It  is  they 
who  make  a  large  part  of  the  world  forget  that 
the  Germans  are  among  the  most  lovable,  use- 
ful, and  enlightened  of  peoples;  that  they  are 
bound  to  us  Americans  by  ties  that  ought  to 
be  indissoluble.  Have  they  not  enriched  our 
blood?  Did  they  not  come  to  us  by  the  hun- 
dred thousand,  fleeing  from  home  because  of  a 
noble  idealism  which  they  transferred  to  our 
country,  pledging  their  faith  with  their  blood 
upon  our  battle-fields  of  civil  strife  —  but  always 
on  the  side  of  the  Union  and  human  liberty? 
Surely  no  German-American  who  really  believes 
in  republican  institutions  and  popular  govern- 
ment can  uphold  this  imperialistic  Germany. 

There  is  a  Germany  other  than  that  of  the 
Junker ',  totally  different,  infinitely  nobler.    It  is 


THE  TWO  GERMANYS  35 

the  Germany  of  great  souls,  with  its  thinkers,  its 
teachers,  its  scientists,  its  civic  administrators, 
its  poets,  its  glorious  musicians,  its  philosophers, 
and  its  idealists.  From  them  hosts  of  our  teach- 
ers, our  professional  men  without  number,  and 
others  in  every  rank  of  life  have  drawn  their 
most  cherished  inspirations.  To  her  we  owe  in 
considerable  measure  our  university  develop- 
ment; from  her  came  in  large  degree  the  impetus 
toward  good  civic  government  which  has  been 
one  of  the  glories  of  our  American  progress  in 
the  last  two  decades.  From  this  Germany 
Lloyd  George  has  plagiarized  those  plans  for 
the  improvement  of  the  welfare  of  the  masses 
which  have  made  him  at  once  the  best-beloved 
and  best-hated  man  in  Great  Britain. 

In  the  civic  care  of  her  own  this  Germany  has 
led  the  world,  with  all  to  do  her  reverence.  She 
has  known  best  how  to  build  the  city  beauti- 
ful, and  made  good  and  progressive  government 
the  birthright  of  all  her  urban  dwellers.  In  no 
other  nation  has  science  in  the  same  degree  be- 
come the  partner  of  commerce  and  of  industry. 
Nowhere  else  has  there  been  a  keener  intellectual 
freedom  among  those  whose  lives  are  dedicated 


36  GERMANY   EMBATTLED 

to  the  pursuit  of  truth,  or  to  the  instruction  of 
the  young.  Nowhere  has  there  been  a  greater 
reverence  for  the  aristocracy  of  intellect,  or  as 
generous  a  recognition  of  its  achievements. 
To  sit  at  the  feet  of  its  inspired  teachers,  men 
and  women  have  come  from  all  quarters  of  the 
globe,  knowing  that  in  a  hundred  fields  this 
Germany  leads  the  world. 

And  it  is  this  Germany  which  to-day  lies 
prostrate  before  us.  It  is  this  Germany  which 
is  being  slaughtered,  whatever  the  reason  or 
the  excuse  for  the  war.  On  behalf  of  this  Ger- 
many any  really  enlightened  ruler  must  have 
stood  for  peace  against  the  world,  no  matter 
who  might  be  mobilizing,  or  where  —  at  least 
until  attacked,  and  her  soil  clearly  invaded. 
To  the  support  of  this  kingdom  of  the  soul  the 
whole  intellectual  world  would  have  risen  —  it 
did  in  "England  —  had  the  Kaiser  but  cried  out 
its  need  and  asked  for  allies  to  defend,  and  not 
to  break,  the  peace.  For  it  any  one  who  real- 
ized its  moral  grandeur  and  worth  ought  to  have 
been  willing  to  abdicate  rather  than  to  plunge 
it  into  the  abyss,  the  hell  of  war. 

But  there  it  lies  to  be  ravaged  by  its  defenders 


THE  TWO  GERMANYS  37 

and  its  enemies  at  will.  For  it  there  can  be  no 
victory,  whoever  wins.  Let  there  be  no  mis- 
take about  that,  whatever  one  hears  about  the 
glorious  courage  of  her  soldiers,  and  their  pos- 
sible conquests.  It  is  not  only  the  laws  which 
are  silent  between  arms ;  all  intellectual  and  spir- 
itual activities  cease  when  men's  sole  thoughts 
are  to  kill,  to  destroy,  to  immolate,  to  make  a 
mockery  of  Christianity.  A  whole  generation 
is  being  wiped  out;  the  flower  of  the  land  be- 
tween the  ages  of  nineteen  and  twenty -four  is  to 
be  sacrificed  by  a  despotic  ruler's  decision ;  per- 
haps another  Goethe,  a  Schumann,  a  Helm- 
holtz,  are  to  be  cut  off  in  their  youth;  all  the 
talents  these  boys  possess  are  certain  to  go  for 
naught.  Those  who  survive  are  to  be  brutal- 
ized by  the  most  frightful  spectacle  of  human 
carnage  the  world  has  ever  seen  —  by  a  sudden 
reversion  to  barbarism.  If  the  troops  of  the 
Kaiser  prove  to  be  the  better  drilled  and  led 
so  as  to  kill  the  greater  number  of  their  fellow 
human  beings,  intellectual  Germany  will  not 
profit  but  will  suffer  thereby. 

It  is  not  merely  that  her  spiritual  growth  has 
been  checked,  and  that  the  pursuit  of  knowledge 


12377 


38  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

is  at  an  end.  A  terrible  blow  has  been  struck 
at  Germany  as  the  seat  of  wisdom.  Interna- 
tional bonds  of  infinite  worth  have  been  sun- 
dered not  to  be  reunited  for  decades  to  come; 
the  Germany  of  calm,  scientific  reasoning  has 
been  submerged  by  the  mad  rush  into  a  war  in 
which  the  Kaiser  has  staked  the  empire  itself, 
as  well  as  every  achievement  of  the  nation- 
builders  of  1870,  and  of  those  who  have  erected 
the  great  commercial  edifice  which  has  been 
the  wonder  of  the  world.  If  there  have  been 
envy  and  jealousy  among  the  other  nations, 
will  not  these  feelings  give  way  to  helpless  rage, 
to  permanent  enmity,  if  the  greatest  of  military 
machines  should  triumph?  Will  not  there  be 
another  Napoleon  only  a  shade  less  dangerous 
than  the  overlord  of  a  century  ago,  to  inspire 
distrust  and  to  court  another  Waterloo?  And 
if  Germany  is  conquered  and  lies  prostrate  in 
sackcloth  and  ashes,  what  endless  humiliation 
will  be  hers !  What  dreams  of  revenge  upon 
all  the  world  may  not  then  fill  the  minds  of 
those  who,  in  such  a  spirit  of  exaltation,  set  out 
to  humble  their  sister  nations  to  East  and  West  ? 
Is  it  not  certain  that,  whatever  the  outcome, 


THE  TWO  GERMANYS  39 

Germany  will  for  decades  be  among  the  most 
hated  of  nations?  Worst  of  all,  every  reac- 
tionary element  in  the  German  Empire,  every 
privileged  class,  every  believer  in  the  divine  right 
of  the  few  who  have  obtained  power,  will  profit. 
Here  is  precisely  where  a  chief  wickedness  of 
the  war  lies.  More  than  four  millions  of  Ger- 
man citizens  are  affiliated  with  the  Social- 
Democratic  party.  These  "traitors"  now  have 
been  forced  into  the  ranks,  but  the  evils  against 
which  they  protested  bulk  as  large  to  them, 
their  devotion  to  their  cause  is  the  same. 
They  have  fought  autocracy  at  every  turn, 
only  to  be  bound  and  delivered  now  by  the  old 
snares,  the  old  teachings  that  one's  country 
must  be  upheld  in  war-time;  that  it  is  proper 
to  commit  murder  if  one  but  murders  by  whole- 
sale —  teachings  that  are  to-day  doing  their 
antichristian  work  in  England,  France,  Rus- 
sia, and  Austria  as  well.  It  is  the  Junker,  the 
grasping  landlords,  the  insolent  tariff  barons,  a 
bigoted  Catholic  clergy  as  in  Bavaria,  and  the 
military  and  the  aristocratic  castes  who  do 
more  to  recruit  the  Socialist  party  than  all  their 
own  leaders  combined.     Whether  one  be  oneself 


40  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

a  Socialist  or  not,  for  their  democratic  striv- 
ings America  must  have  complete  sympathy. 
What  have  they  to  gain  by  this  war  save  the 
privilege  of  additional  military  service  if  Ger- 
many wins,  and  greater  and  greater  tax  bur- 
dens ? 

For  them  the  war  spells  so  obviously  the 
checking  of  their  cause  as  to  make  many  won- 
der if  this  foreseeable  fact  was  not  one  of  the 
motives  of  those  who  welcomed  it  and  brought 
it  on.  Let  no  one  be  deceived  by  the  super- 
ficial assertion  that  as  Germany  rose  to  imperial 
riches  and  greatness  after  the  war  of  1870-71 
so  she  will  rise  still  further  as  a  result  of  this 
one.  The  earlier  struggle  was  but  child's  play 
compared  with  this,  while  there  were  economic 
forces  at  work  which,  together  with  the  final 
abolition  of  customs  and  trade  barriers  between 
the  states  of  the  empire,  accounted  for  that 
great  growth  after  1871,  but  cannot  come  to 
the  rescue  now.  A  foreign  war  —  how  often 
has  it  not  come  to  the  aid  of  endangered  forces 
of  privilege  even  when  not  deliberately  sought? 
How  often  has  it  not  weakened  and  checked 
the  onslaughts  of  liberalism? 


THE  TWO  GERM  AN  YS  41 

Will  it  long  avail  to  tell  the  dissenting  Ger- 
mans that  the  Slavie  peril  must  be  combated; 
that  in  this  world-war  Destiny  speaks  and  that 
it  had  to  come  sooner  or  later?  Doctor  Lieb- 
knecht's  daring  revolt  in  the  Reichstag  seems 
to  indicate  that  it  will  not.  Are  they  not  inevi- 
tably to  count  the  cost  when  the  slaughter  is 
over?  Will  they  not  more  than  ever  cling  to 
the  party  of  "treason"  which  dictates  that  such 
things  shall  not  be?  Will  they  not  turn  to 
any  one  who  teaches  that  it  shall  be  taken  out 
of  the  hands  of  one  man  or  a  group  of  men  to 
say  whether  a  nation  shall  return  to  barbarism 
and  slay  the  best  that  is  in  it  ?  If  they  do  not, 
then  will  the  obsession  of  this  frightful  struggle 
have  taken  a  deeper  hold  than  can  be  believed 
to-day.  Surely  the  German  masses  must  be 
utterly  blinded  if  they  do  not  ask  themselves 
more  than  ever  whether  it  is  because  of  a  gov- 
ernment by  the  few  that  such  national  catas- 
trophes are  possible;  whether  it  is  not  in  spite 
of  such  autocratic  government,  however  benev- 
olent and  however  efficient  along  certain  civic 
and  military  lines  it  may  be,  that  the  liberal, 
the  cultured  Germany  of  to-day  is  what  it  is. 


42  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

What  might  it  not  be  if  its  intellectual  freedom 
were  to  be  typical  of  the  freedom  of  the  masses  ? 
How  much  greater  might  not  be  the  spiritual 
kingdom  which  it  has  built  for  itself  under  these 
conditions?  How  much  happier  would  be  the 
masses  of  the  people ! 

The  masses  of  the  Kaiser's  empire  !  To  them 
surely  the  sympathy  of  the  world  must  go  out 
as  to  the  poor  Belgians  who  have  died  before 
the  invaders  without  knowing  why,  realizing 
only  that  a  hell  of  shot  and  shell  had  burst 
without  warning  upon  them  as  lightning  from 
the  sky.  On  the  heads  of  the  German  masses 
lies  not  the  blood-guilt.  They  come  from  smil- 
ing homes,  from  the  castled  hills  of  Thuringia, 
the  vine-clad  banks  of  the  Rhine,  the  plains  of 
Prussia,  the  poppied  fields  of  Bavaria.  They 
and  their  kind  have  been  rising  steadily  against 
fearful  odds,  helped  on  by  favorable  social 
legislation,  held  back  by  the  heavy  taxes  im- 
posed by  the  military  Moloch,  and  by  their 
three  years  of  army  service;  hampered  in  the 
cities  by  grinding  poverty  and  checked  every- 
where by  iron  castes.  Their  villages  have  just 
begun  to  grow,  to  give  signs  of  a  development 


THE  TWO  GERMANYS  43 

corresponding  to  that  of  the  cities;  to  the  peas- 
ants have  come  at  least  the  harbingers  of  social 
justice;  something  of  the  prosperity  of  the  na- 
tion was  beginning  to  be  theirs.  But  now  the 
mother  of  every  able-bodied  son  must  know  her 
boy  is  upon  the  firing-line  to  destroy  the  sons 
of  some  other  mother  —  because  the  "Triple" 
Alliance  demanded  it.  For  these  solid  peasants, 
the  backbone  of  the  country,  war  can  bring 
nothing  save  woe  and  debt. 

For  a  German-American  whose  heart  goes 
back  to  the  country  that  gave  him  or  his  fathers 
birth,  there  should  be  no  difficulty  in  deciding 
where  his  sympathies  should  lie.  Sorrow  as  he 
must  for  the  German  masses,  if  he  places  reason 
above  emotion  and  sympathy,  he  can  but  with- 
hold his  support  from  the  Kaiser  who  made  no 
better  than  a  dicer's  oath  the  solemn  promise 
of  the  empire  to  respect  the  neutrality  of  Bel- 
gium. If  he  has  owed  anything  to  the  great 
minds  of  Germany,  her  men  of  peace,  of  knowl- 
edge, science,  and  art,  let  him  now  pay  the 
debt  of  being  true  to  their  ideals,  however  far 
some  groups  of  them  may  be  drifting  from  their 
anchorages,  deluded  by  false  visions  of  glory 


44  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

and  of  what  constitutes  genuine  national  no- 
bility. He  might  well  remember  that  Goethe 
himself  faced  a  German  army,  when  it  had 
been  beaten  by  ragged  French  republicans,  to 
assure  it  that  then  and  there  a  new  epoch  had 
begun.  Another  new  epoch  has  begun  for 
Germany;  the  fates  have  grievous  days  in 
store  for  her.  However  difficult  it  may  be,  the 
German-American  must  think  out  for  himself 
what  is  going  to  be  best  for  Germany  in  the 
long  run,  and  ask  whether  victory  by  force  of 
arms  would  not  injure  the  ideal  he  holds  for  the 
Fatherland  far  more  than  would  a  chastening 
defeat.  If  he  does  this  conscientiously  from 
the  American  and  the  republican  view-point, 
there  should  be  but  one  answer. 


Ill 

GERMAN   MILITARISM   AND 
DEMOCRACY 

NINETY-THREE  German  savants  who 
pledged  their  honor  and  reputation  to 
the  truth  of  their  statements  have  re- 
cently declared  that  German  militarism  is  one 
and  indivisible  with  German  culture.  "With- 
out it."  they  said,  "our  culture  would  long  since 
have  been  wiped  off  the  earth."  From  many 
other  German  sources  come  denials  that  Ger- 
many's militarism  is  a  menace  to  the  peace  of 
Europe  or  to  anybody  else.  It  is  defended, 
moreover,  not  only  as  a  cultural  but  as  a  demo- 
cratic institution.  Germans  are  to-day  thank- 
ing God  for  their  militarism,  on  the  ground  that 
but  for  it  Napoleon  would  never  have  been 
humbled  and  the  German  Empire  would  never 
have  come  to  pass;  that  to  its  extent  and  thor- 
oughness  alone   Germany   owes   her  safety   at 

45 


46  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

this  hour,  when  she  is  beset  by  the  troops  of 
nearly  half  the  world,  but  has  thus  far  carried 
on  the  war  almost  entirely  on  other  people's 
soil.  It  is  therefore  worth  while  for  Ameri- 
cans to  examine  this  German  institution  care- 
fully, particularly  as  we  are  already  being  told 
by  certain  soothsayers  that  the  war  convicts 
England  of  folly  in  not  having  resorted  to  uni- 
versal conscription,  and  places  upon  us  the  duty 
of  still  greater  military  burdens,  since  by  some 
occult  reasoning  it  is  apparent  to  them  that  if 
Germany  wins  we  are  to  be  the  next  victims 
of  her  aggrandizing  ambition. 

Like  the  nation  itself,  the  German  army  is 
curiously  two-sided,  for  it  is  both  a  democracy 
and  an  autocracy,  but  with  the  autocracy  on 
top.  It  is  a  democracy  because  within  its  regi- 
ments are  men  of  every  rank  and  caste,  of  every 
grade  of  learning  and  every  degree  of  poverty 
and  wealth.  It  is  democratic  because  it  is  com- 
pulsory and  because  it  spares  none.  No  amount 
of  "  pull "  or  power  can  free  a  German  from  his 
year  or  more  of  service;  if  he  escapes,  it  is  be- 
cause the  army's  draft  for  the  year  when  he 
becomes  liable  for  service  is  so  large  that  all 


MILITARISM  AND  DEMOCRACY    47 

cannot  be  cared  for  in  the  existing  organizations, 
or  because  some  physical  disability  insures  his 
exemption.  Thus,  when  the  call  to  arms  came 
on  the  4th  of  August  it  was  literally  an  uprising 
of  the  people.  The  great  wave  of  emotion  which 
exalted  the  whole  nation  gained  its  impetus  be- 
cause men  of  every  class  went  forth,  singing,  to 
die.  Barriers  of  all  kinds  were  levelled;  in  the 
enthusiasm  of  that  tremendous  hour,  caste  and 
rank  were,  for  the  moment,  forgotten.  The  en- 
tire citizenship  was  drawn  together  by  the  lev- 
elling influence  of  devotion  to  a  single  cause. 
For  the  moment  all  Germany  was  a  democracy, 
and  democratic  were  the  forces  which  stormed 
Liege,  and  swept  like  irresistible  gray-green 
waves  of  the  sea  through  Brussels,  until  they 
were  nearly  in  sight  of  the  defenses  of  Paris. 

In  the  trenches  to-day  he  side  by  side,  as 
common  soldiers  or  non-commissioned  officers, 
men  who  have  made  their  mark  in  the  field  of 
learning,  or  science,  or  business,  or  the  skilled 
professions.  Some  reserve  regiments  would  seem 
to  be  a  cross-section  of  the  population.  One 
of  its  lieutenants  may  be  of  humble  origin,  a 
minor  official,  let  us  say,  in  the  Dresdner  Bank; 


48  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

serving  with  him  may  be  a  reserve  lieutenant 
who  drafted  last  year  one  of  the  most  important 
bills  ever  laid  before  the  Reichstag.  A  reserve 
non-commissioned  officer  who  reports  to  them 
may  be  a  survivor  of  the  twenty-six  Socialist 
deputies  to  the  Reichstag  who  found  the  call  of 
conventional  patriotism  far  more  compelling 
than  the  peace  principles  of  their  party.  A 
lieutenant  next  to  them  may  bear  the  plebeian 
name  of  Wilhelm  Miiller,  yet  be  one  of  the 
ablest  junior  officials  of  the  Colonial  Office,  for 
the  moment  bedfellow  with  a  police  officer  of 
Berlin  who  has  exchanged  the  pursuit  of  crim- 
inals for  the  pursuit  of  the  French.  Next  in 
line  may  be  a  university  professor  of  distinction, 
a  painter  for  whom  great  things  are  prophesied, 
a  musician  of  note,  and  with  them  may  be  serv- 
ing apprentices,  laborers,  street-cleaners,  con- 
ductors, hod-carriers  —  men  from  every  humble 
and  honorable  walk  in  life.  It  is  reported  that 
the  Kaiser  recently  met  a  soldier  of  the  Landwehr 
driving  a  lot  of  hogs,  whose  presence  on  the  road 
stopped  the  royal  motor.  To  the  Kaiser's  de- 
light, when  he  asked  the  spectacled  herdsman 
whether  he  was  a  farmer  in  time  of  peace,  he 


MILITARISM   AND   DEMOCRACY    49 

answered:  "No,  your  Majesty,  I  am  a  professor 
in  the  University  of  Tubingen." 

There  is  similarly  no  discrimination  among 
regiments  when  war  is  on;  as  far  as  this  the 
General  Staff's  democracy  extends.  Whatever 
the  prestige  of  a  regiment  in  peace  times, 
whether  it  be  the  Garde  du  Corps,  the  crack 
cavalry  regiment,  or  the  Death's  Head  Hussars, 
until  lately  commanded  by  the  Crown  Prince, 
or  one  of  the  Imperial  Infantry  Guards,  it  meets 
with  no  other  consideration  than  that  of  the 
most  plebeian  infantry  regiment  when  the  fight- 
ing is  under  way.  It  makes  no  difference  if 
every  officer  in  it  is  of  ancient  and  noble  lineage. 
The  Guards  are  reported  to  have  been  among  the 
heaviest  losers  in  the  present  war,  precisely  as 
at  St.  Privat  in  1870,  when  five  battalions  lost 
every  officer,  and  were  fighting  under  their  ser- 
geants when  the  day  was  won.  It  is  just  the 
same  with  the  Kaiser's  younger  sons;  they  have 
gone  into  the  actual  welter  of  battle  exactly 
as  if  offspring  of  the  humblest  Westphalian 
peasant,  Prince  Joachim  being  wounded  by 
shrapnel  and  Prince  Oscar  collapsing  from  ex- 
haustion and  heart  weakness  after  a  charge  at 


50  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

the  head  of  his  regiment  against  Turcos,  whose 
bullets  laid  low  most  of  his  regimental  officers. 
The  Crown  Prince  may  be  safe  by  reason  of 
his  being  the  nominal  commander  of  an  army, 
but  his  brothers  are  alive  to-day  only  by  the 
fortunes  of  war.  Not  unnaturally  the  German 
press  has  drawn  biting  contrasts  between  the 
sons  of  the  Kaiser  and  the  Prince  of  Wales,  who, 
it  was  officially  announced  in  England,  was  at 
twenty  not  sufficiently  trained  as  a  soldier  to 
go  to  the  front  until  three  and  a  half  months 
of  war  had  passed.  That  the  privilege  of  dying 
as  the  German  General  Staff  wills  belongs  to 
princes  as  much  as  to  anybody  else  is  attested 
by  the  death  of  Lieutenant-General  Frederick 
Prince  of  Saxe-Meiningen,  a  brother-in-law  of 
the  Kaiser's  sister,  and  of  other  notables. 

But  the  brief  for  the  democracy  of  the  Ger- 
man army  does  not  end  here.  It  enforces,  so 
its  adherents  claim,  a  fine  standard  of  personal 
conduct,  of  physical  vigor,  and  of  loyalty  to 
King  and  country  throughout  the  nation.  The 
army  takes  the  humblest  conscript,  however 
ignorant  and  lacking  in  self-respect,  and  turns 
him  out  a  decent,  healthy  citizen  with  a  fine 


MILITARISM  AND  DEMOCRACY    51 

physique,  excellent  carriage,  inured  to  heavy 
burdens,  long  marches,  and  absolute  obedience. 
If  he  is  a  dull  clodhopper  from  a  Polish  province, 
unable  to  speak  German,  the  recruit  is  taught 
his  King's  language  and  how  to  write  it;  he 
learns,  as  Kipling  puts  it,  to  "wash  behind  his 
ears,"  how  to  eat,  how  to  walk,  how  to  keep 
himself  scrupulously  neat,  and  how  to  think  for 
himself. 

The  great  lesson  of  subordination  to  au- 
thority is  thus  learned,  and  in  many  cases  self- 
restraint,  as  a  result  of  methods  which  are 
applied  just  as  rigorously  to  the  son  of  a  million- 
aire or  of  an  aristocrat.  The  natural  German 
love  of  outdoors  and  of  exercise  in  the  open  is 
intensified  by  service  with  the  colors;  a  genuine 
comradeship  with  men  in  all  walks  of  life  springs 
up,  and  with  it  comes  the  ability  to  feel  as  a 
German,  to  think  in  terms  of  the  nation,  whose 
patriotic  songs  one  and  all  sing  as  they  march, 
for  singing  is  a  wise  requirement  of  the  German 
military  training.  Certainly,  as  the  English 
military  reports  have  so  generously  attested, 
this  training  teaches  men  to  face  certain  death 
for  the  Fatherland  with  a  devotion  never  sur- 


52  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

passed  by  Occidentals  and  equalling  the  stoical 
and  fatalistic  pursuance  of  death  by  Orientals. 
Again,  the  wonderful  thoroughness  of  the  mili- 
tary machine  leaves  its  impress  upon  all  who 
are  for  a  time  of  its  cogs,  and  to  it  is  attributed 
some  of  that  unequalled  efficiency  of  the  Ger- 
mans to  which  the  nation  owes  its  extraordinary 
national  rise  and  prosperity.  The  army  is,  in 
other  words,  regarded  as  a  vital  part  of  the 
great  German  system  of  education. 

If  this  were  all,  to  be  said  of  German  mili- 
tarism, its  case  would  be,  perhaps,  won.  Eng- 
land and  the  United  States  might  then  be 
tempted  to  add  a  similar  course  to  their 
educational  system.  But  there  is  the  other 
side. 

It  is  hard  to  conceive  of  a  closer  corporation 
or  a  more  autocratic  body  than  the  German 
General  Staff;  it  is  the  army  to  which  it  gives 
the  dominating  note.  It  is  a  group  of  aggres- 
sive, hard-working,  exceptionally  able  officers, 
envied  by  soldiers  all  over  the  world  because 
the  nation  does  as  they  tell  it.  In  1913,  when 
they  demanded  one  hundred  and  forty  thousand 
more  men,  the  war  minister  acted  as  their  spokes- 


MILITARISM   AND   DEMOCRACY    53 

man,  and  the  Reichstag  hardly  questioned;  the 
bulk  of  the  Socialists,  foreshadowing  their  deser- 
tion of  their  peace  principles,  acquiesced  by  a 
cowardly  approval  or  dodged  by  a  refusal  to 
vote.  For  the  first  time,  after  this  vote  the  tax- 
gatherer  knocked  at  German  doors  not  to  take 
a  share  of  the  income,  but  some  of  the  citizens' 
capital,  and  no  one  protested.  To  question 
the  General  Staff  would  be  like  questioning  the 
Deity,  a  fact  which  explains  why,  the  General 
Staff  having  declared  that  it  was  essential  to 
invade  Belgium,  nobody  in  all  Germany  doubts 
that  decision.  One  may  start  controversies 
over  sacred  theology  in  the  Kaiser's  domains, 
but  not  one  as  to  the  all-embracing  wTisdom  of 
the  General  Staff,  for  on  that  there  have  never 
been  two  opinions  since  1866  up  to  the  time  of 
this  writing.  When  the  deadly  forty-two-centi- 
metre guns  were  planned,  the  Grosser  General- 
stab  asked  the  Reichstag  for  a  large  appropria- 
tion and  obtained  it  without  disclosing  in  any 
degree  the  purpose  for  which  it  was  asked.  It 
was  enough  that  the  war  minister  declared 
the  Generalstab  must  have  it  for  a  purpose  too 
secret  and   too   important   to   be   intrusted   to 


54  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

the  Reichstag  committee  on  army  estimates  or 
to  any  but  the  inner  ring  of  the  army. 

It  is  that  inner  ring  which  settles  the  fate  of 
an  officer  after  he  has  reached  colonel's  rank. 
Let  one  be  overslaughed  and  he  resigns  at  once. 
Let  him  blunder  in  the  manoeuvres  and  his 
"papers"  go  forward  promptly;  the  General 
Staff  sees  to  that.  Physical  efficiency  is  in- 
sisted upon  as  well  as  mental.  An  officer  may 
be  as  dissipated  as  he  pleases  but  he  must  be 
on  hand  with  a  clear  head  for  the  five-o'clock 
spring  and  summer  march-out  of  his  regiment. 
His  habits  and  customs  may  be  deserving  of 
all  sorts  of  censure,  but  if  he  studies  diligently, 
passes  his  examinations  well,  has  good  efficiency 
reports,  and  is  altogether  ein  schneidiger  Offizier 
his  superiors  will  say  nothing.  There  is  no  age 
limit  as  in  our  army,  as  is  evidenced  by  the 
prevalence  of  men  approaching  seventy  in  high 
positions  to-day.  Thus,  Generals  von  Kluck, 
von  Hausen,  and  von  Biilow  are  sixty-eight; 
Generals  von  Moltke  and  von  Emmich,  the 
latter  the  capturer  of  Liege,  are  sixty-six;  and 
Field-Marshal  von  Hindenburg  is  sixty-seven. 
But  to  hold  their  positions  men  like  these  must 


MILITARISM  AND   DEMOCRACY    55 

be  vigorous  physically  and  mentally,  agreeable 
to  the  General  Staff,  and  absolute  upholders  of 
the  existing  military  traditions  and  order. 

By  this  we  do  not  mean  that  each  general 
must  be  a  follower  of  Bernhardi.  Many  of  the 
German  generals  probably  never  saw  his  book 
nor  even  heard  of  it.  But  they  must  subscribe 
fervently  to  the  overbearing  pretensions  of  the 
military  clique,  to  the  autocratic  attitude  of  the 
army  toward  the  civilian  and  the  nation.  They 
must  carry  themselves  as  members  of  an  exalted 
caste  whose  adoration  of  their  uniform  borders 
on  pagan  worship.  Take  the  case  of  Colo- 
nel von  Reuter,  who  commanded  the  Ninety- 
ninth  Infantry,  stationed  at  Zabern,  in  Alsace, 
and  was  acquitted  in  January  of  last  year  (1914) 
of  the  charges  of  illegal  assumption  of  the  ex- 
ecutive power,  illegal  imprisonment  of  civilians, 
and  the  invasion  of  private  houses  in  order  to 
make  arrests.  This  was  at  the  time  when  his 
young  officers,  whom  one  could  hardly  accuse  of 
being  democratic  in  spirit,  were  sabring  or  per- 
secuting the  civilians,  who  were  driven  almost 
to  revolt  by  the  overbearing  arrogance  of  the 
military.     Colonel  von  Reuter  himself  openly 


56  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

and  aggressively  stated  on  his  trial  that  if 
matters  had  gone  any  farther  he  would  have 
turned  his  machine-guns,  which  stood  ready  in 
the  courtyard  of  the  barracks,  on  the  populace. 
"Blood  may  flow,"  he  had  threatened  at  the 
crucial  moment,  "for  we  are  protecting  the 
prestige  and  the  honor  of  the  whole  army  and 
the  gravely  shaken  authority  of  the  govern- 
ment." "I  was  convinced  that  our  govern- 
ment was  allowing  its  reins  to  drag  on  the 
ground,"  he  told  the  court,  and  so,  in  the  name 
of  autocracy,  he  assured  the  public  prosecutor 
that  "jurisprudence  ends  here,"  and  declared 
martial  law. 

A  court  of  high  officers  sustained  Colonel  von 
Reuter  and  his  subordinates  on  the  ground  that 
a  decree  issued  by  the  King  of  Prussia  in  1820 
—  not  a  law  —  gave  the  military  the  right  to 
intervene,  without  waiting  for  a  request  from 
civil  authority,  if  they  deemed  the  time  had 
come  to  act.  More  than  that,  the  army  ex- 
pressly upheld  the  arrogant  acts  of  the  officers, 
for  whom  the  judge-advocate  never  asked  more 
than  a  week's  or  three  days'  imprisonment  as 
punishment !     Colonel  von  Reuter  is  reported 


MILITARISM  AND   DEMOCRACY    57 

to  have  won  the  Iron  Cross;  and  the  young 
officer  who  sabred  the  lame  cobbler  of  Zabern 
is  also  at  the  front,  but  not,  let  us  trust,  in  the 
name  of  democracy.  In  defending  Colonel  von 
Reuter,  the  minister  of  war,  General  von  Fal- 
kenhayn,  who  has  been  acting  as  chief  of  staff 
during  the  recent  temporary  illness  of  General 
von  Moltke,  declared  that,  while  the  colonel 
might  have  exceeded  his  authority  at  times, 
his  acts,  nevertheless,  saved  his  officers  from  the 
necessity  of  running  their  swords  through  the 
insulting  civilians  in  order  to  protect  the  honor 
of  the  "Kaiser's  Coat."  This  coat  —  hardly  a 
democratic  garment  —  thus  inevitably  recalls 
Gessler's  hat;  the  General  Staff  means  that 
there  shall  be  no  vital  difference  between  the 
deference  asked  of  Wilhelm  Tell  and  that  which 
the  German  civilian  owes  to  the  "gay  coat"  of 
the  military.  Officers  have  frequently  been  ap- 
plauded and  acquitted,  or  at  most  imprisoned 
in  a  fortress  for  a  few  weeks,  for  stabbing  civil- 
ians or  killing  them  in  duels  that  are  against 
the  law  but  are  often  forced  upon  officers  by 
decrees  of  the  regimental  courts  of  honor,  whose 
ideals  of  conduct  are  direct  inheritances  from 


58  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

the  days  of  Frederick  the  Great.  If  the  full 
story  of  these  courts  of  honor  could  be  written, 
it  would  astound  people  everywhere. 

In  brief,  the  army  is  a  narrow  caste  with  pro- 
fessional ideals  of  a  bygone  time,  scrupulously 
maintained  in  the  face  of  modern  progress  by 
the   ruling   clique.     From   its   highest   officers, 
its  General  Staff,  its  Crown  Prince,  as  well  as 
its  Kaiser,  the  army  takes  its  tone  as  a  bulwark 
of  the  privileged  classes,  to  whom  anything  that 
smacks  of  democracy  is  anathema.     It  is  the 
chief  pillar  of  the  great  landlords,  the  Junker, 
and   the   aristocrats,   as   it   is   of   the   throne. 
When  the  Reichstag  passed  a  vote  of  censure 
on  the  government  because  of  the  Zabern  affair, 
an   almost   unheard-of  thing,   the   government 
simply   ignored  the  vote.     Doubtless  the  im- 
perial chancellor  and  General  von  Falkenhayn, 
the   censured   ministers,   smile   to-day   if   they 
think  of  this  incident,  and  reflect  how  com- 
pletely the  war  has  placed  the  Reichstag,  the 
Social-Democrats,  and  all  the  rest  of  the  civil- 
ians in  their  power.     There  being  no  responsible 
ministry  to  fall  in  Germany,  the  fate  of  the  na- 
tion has  rested  —  less  than  a  year  after  their 


MILITARISM  AND  DEMOCRACY    59 

censure  by  the  national  parliament  —  in  their 
and  the  Kaiser's  hands.  As  for  the  Kaiser  and 
the  Crown  Prince,  who  publicly  upheld  Colonel 
von  Reuter,  they  may  for  the  moment  be  demo- 
crats, but  the  only  reason  why  they  do  not  fear 
the  Social-Democrats,  whom  a  few  years  ago 
the  Kaiser  denounced  as  traitors  to  the  country, 
is  the  existence  of  the  army.  General  von  Fal- 
kenhayn  declared  in  the  Reichstag,  in  Decem- 
ber, 1913,  that  "without  the  army  not  a  stone 
of  the  Reichstag  building  would  remain  in 
place."  Is  there  any  doubt  that  this  demo- 
cratic organization  of  eight  hundred  thousand 
men  would  close  the  doors  of  the  Reichstag  if 
the  Kaiser  so  ordered?  Did  not  the  grand- 
fathers of  those  now  in  the  trenches  in  the  Im- 
perial Guard  regiments  crush  out  the  repub- 
lican uprising  in  1848  ? 

In  this  anti-democratic  tendency  the  German 
army  is  not  different  from  any  other.  The 
same  trend  toward  caste  and  autocracy  is  no- 
ticeable, to  greater  or  less  degree,  in  every  army; 
even  a  study  of  the  social  life  of  our  American 
navy  would  prove  this.  If  England  creates  a 
great  standing  army  the  same  phenomena  will 


CO  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

be  still  more  manifest  than  in  her  present 
regular  force,  which  has  been  about  the  most 
undemocratic  machine  thinkable.  The  social, 
court,  and  petticoat  influences  that  controlled 
the  British  service  down  to  the  Boer  War  have 
been  known  of  all  informed  men.  It  took  this 
present  war,  with  its  overwhelming  need  for  of- 
ficers, to  break  down  the  barriers  of  caste  erected 
against  the  common  soldier.  Lord  Kitchener 
did  an  unheard-of  thing  recently  when  he  ad- 
vanced one  hundred  and  twenty-five  sergeants 
and  corporals  to  lieutenancies  in  a  single  issue 
of  the  official  Gazette,  yet  no  one  would  describe 
Lord  Kitchener  as  an  apostle  of  democracy.  The 
nature  of  an  army  and  its  very  organization  are 
undemocratic;  the  whole  basis  is  a  hierarchy  with 
the  power  centring  in  one  head. 

Of  course,  the  autocratic  nature  of  an  army 
is  not  affected  by  the  bourgeois  antecedents  of 
some  of  its  officers.  In  Germany  a  man  of 
plainest  lineage,  be  he  a  good  soldier,  can  rise 
to  high  rank.  Of  the  active  officers  prior  to 
the  outbreak  of  war,  5.3  per  cent  were  the  sons 
of  minor  officials  or  of  non-commissioned  officers; 
that  is,  they  came  of  families  with  no  particular 


MILITARISM  AND   DEMOCRACY    Gl 

social    position.     A    number    of    the    German 
corps  commanders  are  to-day  commoners  who 
do  not  write  von  before  their  names.     But  they 
must  have  inherited  or  married  means  in  order 
to  hold  their  present  positions,  since  German 
officers  cannot  live  on  their  pay.     To  no  regi- 
ment can  an  officer  be  appointed  until  he  has 
been  voted  on  by  his  future  comrades,  just  as 
if  he  were  entering  a  select  club.     This  may 
make  for  harmony  and  for  efficiency,  but  he 
would  be  rash  who  would  assert  that  it  smacked 
of  democracy.    Of  the  rest  of  the  corps  of  officers, 
as  it  existed  at  the  beginning  of  1914,  9.7  per 
cent  were  sons  of  large  landed  proprietors,  while 
62.5  were  sons  of  army  officers,  of  civilian  offi- 
cials, of  judges,  and  of  members  of  the  learned 
professions.     Only   15.1  per  cent  were  sons  of 
business  men;  the  remainder,  comprising  6.3  per 
cent,  represented  a  varied  group  of  occupations. 
Of  course,  many  regiments  are  wholly  closed 
to  men  without  title.    The  bourgeois  officers  go 
to  the  least  desirable  regiments,  and  Jews  are, 
of   course,    quite   good   enough    to   be   reserve 
officers,  and  serve  as  Kannonenf utter,  whenever 
the  General  Staff  pleases.     But  none  hitherto 


02  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

have  been  regimental  officers,  and  none  have 
risen  to  high  rank  in  the  staff  departments  to 
which  they  have  been  admitted  as  officers.  Yet 
these  are  not  the  only  undemocratic  discrimina- 
tions. Such  newspapers  as  the  Jewish  Frank- 
furter Zeitung  and  the  Berliner  Tageblatt,  as  well 
as  the  Socialist  Vorwarts  —  the  Frankfurter  and 
the  Tageblatt  are  now  unreservedly  upholding 
the  war  and  the  army  —  have  in  the  past  filled 
columns  upon  columns  with  discreet  criticisms 
of  the  military.  When  the  army  increase  was 
voted  last  year  certain  Socialists  took  the  oppor- 
tunity to  criticise  the  favoritism  in  regulations 
shown  to  the  Imperial  Guards.  Of  course,  they 
accomplished  nothing.  Why  should  the  Gen- 
eral Staff  pay  attention  to  mere  members  of  the 
Reichstag,  and  Socialists  at  that?  In  a  demo- 
cratic organization  criticism  of  the  organization 
is  permitted;  none  is  tolerated  in  the  German 
army.  When  an  exceptionally  able  military 
critic  of  the  Berliner  Tageblatt,  Colonel  Gadke, 
a  retired  officer,  undertook  to  criticise  the  serv- 
ice, the  military  authorities  tried  to  deprive 
him  of  his  right  to  sign  as  "former  colonel"  of 
an  artillery  regiment.     That  he  is  not  figuring 


MILITARISM  AND  DEMOCRACY    63 

as  a  correspondent  or  critic  now  has  perhaps 
some  connection  with  this  incident.  Any  effort 
to  effect  reforms  in  the  army  is  certain  to  en- 
counter grave  obstacles.  Did  not  the  late  Gen- 
eral Bronsart  von  Schellendorf ,  one  of  the  ablest 
war  ministers  Germany  has  had,  fail  utterly  in 
1893-96,  despite  his  high  office,  in  his  effort  to 
reform  the  army's  court  procedure  and  system 
of  punishments? 

If  there  is  any  atmosphere  in  which  democ- 
racy does  not  flourish  it  is  that  of  a  Continental 
barracks.  German  discipline  is  unyielding  as 
iron.  The  power  of  the  officer  is  absolute  and 
that  of  the  non-commissioned  officer  little  less 
so.  The  men  in  the  ranks  change  completely 
every  three  years,  but  the  non-commissioned 
officers  are  usually  professional  soldiers  for  a 
long  term,  who  know  the  ropes  well.  The  condi- 
tions are  such  that  brutal  ones  among  them  can 
make  existence  a  hell  for  anv  man  they  do  not 
like.  Just  as  it  is  hard  to  prevent  some  hazing 
at  West  Point,  so  there  is  always  some  in  the 
German  barracks.  It  is  often  almost  impossi- 
ble to  checkmate  brutality  among  the  non- 
commissioned officers,  because  the  presumption 


04  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

is  always  in  favor  of  authority;  so  there  are 
occasionally  suicides  in  the  barracks,  frequently 
desertions,  and  sometimes  trials  of  men  finally 
caught  in  ill-treating  subordinates.  When  Rosa 
Luxemburg,  the  fiery  Socialist  orator,  declared 
at  Freiburg  last  year  (1914),  in  speaking  of  the 
case  of  a  horribly  abused  soldier  at  Metz,  "It 
is  certainly  one  of  those  dramas  which  are 
enacted  day  in  and  day  out  in  German  bar- 
racks, although  the  groans  of  the  actors  seldom 
reach  our  ears,"  General  von  Falkenhayn,  as 
war  minister,  prosecuted  the  "Red  Rosa"  for 
libelling  the  army.  The  case  was  promptly 
dropped  when  her  counsel  announced  that  they 
proposed  to  call  one  thousand  and  thirty  eye- 
witnesses to  such  wrong-doing,  mostly  in  the 
form  of  "slaps  in  the  face,  punches  and  kicks, 
beating  with  sheathed  sabres  and  bayonets, 
with  riding-whips  and  harness  straps;  forcible 
jamming  of  ill-set  helmets  on  the  wearer's  head; 
compulsory  baths  in  icy  water,  followed  by 
scrubbing  down  with  scrub-brushes  until  the 
blood  ran;  compulsory  squatting  in  muscle- 
straining  attitudes  until  the  victim  collapsed  or 
wept  for  pain;    unreasonable  fatigue  drill,  and 


MILITARISM  AND  DEMOCRACY    65 

so  on.  There  were  also  abundant  cases  of  ab- 
surd and  humiliating  punishments  inflicted  by 
non-commissioned  officers,  such  as  turning  the 
men  out  of  bed  and  making  them  climb  to  the 
top  of  cupboards  or  sweep  out  the  dormitory 
with  tooth-brushes."  Now,  single  men  in  bar- 
racks are  never  plaster  saints,  as  Kipling,  the 
exalter  of  British  militarism  and  hater  of  Ger- 
man militarism,  has  made  quite  clear  to  us. 
Sporadic  cases  of  abuse  happen  in  our  own 
American  barracks;  but  no  one  will,  it  is  to  be 
hoped,  assert  that  in  this  phase  of  its  existence 
the  German  army  even  faintly  suggests  a  de- 
mocracy. 

This  army  has  had  its  Dreyfus  case,  too, 
though  the  victim  was  not  an  officer,  but  a 
Sergeant  Martin  who  on  a  second  trial  was 
found  guilty,  on  circumstantial  evidence,  of 
killing  his  captain.  The  two  civilian  members 
of  the  court  found  him  not  guilty;  the  prose- 
cutor asked  only  for  imprisonment,  but  the 
military  judges  pronounced  the  death  sentence 
in  addition  to  imprisonment.  They  felt  they 
must  uphold  their  caste,  right  or  wrong.  A 
lieutenant  stationed  at  Memel  was  found   to 


66  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

have  beaten  a  soldier  so  severely  with  a  sword 
that  his  victim  had  to  be  dropped  from  the 
military  service,  compensated,  and  pensioned 
for  injuries  "incident  to  the  service."  Not  that 
the  other  type  of  officer  is  lacking.  As  the 
writer  knows  by  personal  experience,  there  are 
plenty  of  kindly,  gifted,  and  charming  officers 
who  are  neither  fire-eaters  nor  war-worshippers, 
who  write  no  jingo  books  and  do  not  subscribe 
to  Bernhardt  They  despise  the  intrigues,  the 
narrowness,  and  frequent  immorality  of  the 
small  garrison,  and  the  dissipation  of  life  in  the 
big  cities.  They  recognize  the  antiquated  char- 
acter of  the  code  of  honor,  but  they  are  helpless 
to  change  it,  and  as  they  grow  older  the  more 
ready  they  are  to  think  an  intense  militarism 
the  normal  condition  of  society.  If  there  are 
many  officers  of  this  type,  particularly  in  the 
South  German  armies,  the  trend  is,  however, 
toward  the  overbearing  arrogance  of  the  Von 
Reuters,  which  is  again  merely  saying  that  mili- 
tarism unchecked  and  unsubordinated  to  civilian 
control  will  run  to  excesses  everywhere.  The 
note  of  Bernhardi  has  been  more  and  more  often 
heard  with  the  cry  that  war  is  the  natural  state 


MILITARISM  AND  DEMOCRACY    07 

of  man  and  that  the  German  army  is  for  war. 
It  is  quite  possible  that  the  Kaiser,  in  the  last 
moments  before  the  war,  was  overborne  against 
his  better  judgment  by  the  General  Staff  clique 
with  which  he  is  surrounded,  and  signed  the 
fatal  order  practically  under  compulsion.  But 
there  were  thousands  of  his  officers  who  went 
to  the  war  exulting  that  the  time  had  come  at 
last  when  their  years  of  devoted  study  and 
ceaseless  training,  unsurpassed  in  its  compre- 
hensiveness and  its  intensity,  were  to  give  way 
to  the  practical  application  of  all  they  had 
learned  as  to  man-killing. 

The  spirit  of  arrogance  and  aristocracy  so 
characteristic  of  the  extreme  Prussian  militarists 
has  penetrated  even  further  than  into  the  South 
German  armies.  It  has  made  itself  felt  in  civil 
life  in  increasing  measure,  as  is  only  natural. 
When  men,  by  reason  of  the  coat  they  wear, 
deem  themselves  sacrosanct  and  especially  priv- 
ileged, they  are  bound  to  have  imitators  in 
plenty,  not  only  among  those  subordinated  to 
them,  but  those  whose  garments  are  of  the  un- 
uniformed  multitude.  The  aggressive  tone  of  the 
typical  lieutenant  is  quickly  caught,  and  so  is  his 


68  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

total  lack  of  consideration  for  others.  For  in- 
stance, the  rules  of  his  caste  make  it  impossible 
for  him  to  carry  a  bundle  or  a  bag  for  his  wife, 
so  she  must  lug  it  by  his  side,  and  there  are  many 
similarly  odd  customs.  The  habits  of  officers 
of  the  fashionable  regiments  do  not  help  a  young 
officer  to  a  real  respect  for  womankind,  and  the 
frequent  marriage-a-la-inode  for  money  to  pay 
debts,  or  to  support  one's  station  in  military 
life,  does  not  tend  toward  morality  or  happiness. 
If  he  escape  these  perils,  the  young  officer  is  in 
danger  of  becoming  the  conceited  or  silly  snob 
whom  the  Fliegende  Blatter  satirizes  so  perfectly. 
No  one  has  yet,  however,  measured  the  whole 
effect  of  these  tendencies  upon  the  German 
nation.  The  roughness  and  the  coarseness  of 
the  barracks  and  the  supercilious  attitude  of  the 
officers  as  a  class  are  without  doubt  in  part  re- 
sponsible for  the  arrogance  and  bad  manners 
which  are  so  often  noticed  by  foreigners  in 
German  travellers,  and  are  freely  deprecated 
by  the  more  refined  and  thoughtful  Germans. 
One  meets  Americans  and  English  in  numbers 
abroad  who  can  also  be  trying  indeed;  no 
country,  alas,  has  a  monopoly  of  purse-proud 


MILITARISM   AND   DEMOCRACY    69 

travelling  nouveaux  riches  or  vulgar  vacation- 
trippers;  but  many  observers  of  Germany  dur- 
ing the  last  three  decades  have  been  struck  with 
the  fact  that  German  bad  manners  often  go 
hand  in  hand  with  an  assumption  of  superiority 
which  is  extremely  trying,  and  may  properly 
be  connected  with  a  similar  military  manner 
that  an  American  often  finds  utterly  unbear- 
able. Among  the  masses,  upon  whom  the  three- 
year  military  service  does  have  some  excellent 
effects,  their  schooling  under  the  overbearing 
non-commissioned  officers  is  often  to  be  traced 
by  the  spread  among  them  of  the  unpleasant 
traits  of  the  barracks.  It  may  even  be  asked 
whether  certain  unsparing,  roughshod  methods 
of  the  nation's  soldiers  in  Belgium,  as  well  as 
the  many  offensive  utterances  in  the  press 
which  have  made  so  many  Americans  rub  their 
eyes  and  say,  "This  is  not  the  Germany  that 
I  knew  years  ago,"  are  not  due  to  a  subconscious 
influence  of  the  military  spirit.  Certainly,  un- 
checked military  authority  invariably  leads  to 
an  arrogant  and  tyrannical  spirit  which  may  be 
more  or  less  inseparable  from  the  military  caste 
with   its  sharp   social   distinctions   and   clearly 


70  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

divided  grades.  Our  own  American  army  has 
often  had  to  bear  with  precisely  this  sort  of 
charge,  and  the  allegation  that  it  falls  far  be- 
hind the  French  in  its  lack  of  democracy  and  a 
due  consideration  by  the  officers  for  the  en- 
listed men  has  also  been  made  at  times. 

As  for  Germany,  it  may  well  be  asked  whether 
an  army  which  by  its  very  existence  creates 
fear  and  militaristic  rivalry,  which  forever  talks 
war,  can  be  either  a  democratic  force  or,  in  the 
long  run,  a  sound  educational  influence.  As  an 
educational  system  it  may  have  certain  merits, 
but  even  German  professors  would  hardly  deny 
that  it  is  bought  at  a  heavy  cost  to  the  school 
system  of  the  empire,  and,  lately,  to  the  univer- 
sity world,  for  some  of  the  greatest  schools  of 
learning  find  themselves  hampered  and  pinched. 
If  there  are  underpaid  common-school  teachers 
anywhere,  they  live  in  Germany,  and  particu- 
larly in  Bavaria.  The  genteel  poverty  of  these 
men  who  have  to  exist  upon  their  pay  is  one  of 
the  great  tragedies  of  life  under  the  Kaiser. 
But  the  economic  waste  of  the  army  is  a  chief 
stumbling-block  to  any  betterment  in  their  con- 
dition, precisely  as  the  millions  it  costs  prevent 


MILITARISM  AND  DEMOCRACY    71 

reforms  in  many  other  directions.  It  would 
seem  as  if  it  would  be  better  to  have  the  Krupps 
earn  less  than  twelve  or  fourteen  per  cent  per 
annum  and  the  school-teachers  a  little  more. 
It  would  be  better  to  be  less  efficient  as  a  nation 
to  the  extent  that  that  efficiency  is  created  by 
the  army,  and  for  the  masses  to  be  happier, 
with  a  consequent  decrease  of  a  million  or  so 
in  the  Social-Democratic  voters.  As  long  as 
they  can  roll  up  four  millions  of  votes  and  still 
protest  against  militarism,  even  though  swept 
off  their  feet  in  war-time,  all  cannot  be  well  with 
a  culture  founded  on  military  force.  That  their 
voices  and  many  others  will  again  be  uplifted  to 
protest  against  war  and  armies  when  peace  re- 
turns, is  the  one  thing  that  is  certain  about  this 
war. 

In  no  such  military  and  bureaucratic  atmos- 
phere as  exists  in  Germany  does  democracy 
thrive !  Instead,  we  have  the  tradition  that  as 
the  German  Empire  is  the  army's  creation  so 
the  nation's  future  is  dependent  wholly  upon  it. 
Imitating  the  ninety-three  savants,  three  thou- 
sand German  teachers  in  universities  and  schools 
of   technology   have   put   their   names   to   the 


72  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

statement  that  there  is  no  other  spirit  in  the 
army  save  that  of  the  nation;  that  the  spirit  of 
German  knowledge  and  militarism  are  the  same; 
that  the  German  army  and  the  German  univer- 
sities are  identical  in  their  aspirations,  since 
both  are  devoted  to  science.  They,  too,  ap- 
parently cannot  understand  that  a  culture 
which  exists  only  by  reason  of  the  arms  behind 
it  is  no  more  a  normal,  healthy  growth  than  is 
an  industry  artificially  created  by  a  protective 
tariff,  and  kept  alive  solely  by  receiving  part 
or  all  of  its  profits  by  the  favor  of  a  treasury. 
They  belie  their  own  culture,  because  it  is  a  free 
growth  while  service  in  the  army  is  compulsory, 
and  compulsory  service  of  the  German  type  may 
be  universal  but  it  is  not  democratic.  Again, 
this  sudden  assertion  that  Germany  is  wholly 
dependent  upon  her  army  for  safety  is  the  his- 
toric argument  of  decadent  peoples  relying  en- 
tirely upon  mercenaries.  Is  the  German  de- 
mocracy of  intellect  so  without  any  sources  of 
strength  within  itself  that  it  cannot  flourish 
save  by  grace  of  the  militarists?  We  believe 
that  when  the  present  Rausch  (intoxication)  of 
the  German  people  is  at  an  end  their  intellectual 


MILITARISM  AND   DEMOCRACY    73 

leaders  will  be  the  first  to  deny  this  interdepend- 
ence of  their  realm  with  another  so  material- 
istic, so  mediaeval,  so  autocratic,  with  such  bar- 
barous aims  as  conquest  by  blood  and  iron  and 
man-killing  by  the  hundred  thousand. 


IV 

THE  PROPAGANDA  IN  AMERICA 

FOR  all  Americans  who  have  sat  at  the  feet 
of  Germany's  great  teachers  and  profited 
by  their  wisdom,  there  is  no  more  sorrow- 
ful side  to  the  war  than  the  injury  she  has  done 
to  herself  as  a  seat  of  learning.  It  seems  almost 
incredible  that  it  is  precisely  the  German  teach- 
ers who  are  producing  a  most  unpleasant  im- 
pression on  this  side  of  the  water  in  their  efforts 
to  win  American  public  opinion  for  their  cause, 
but  such  is  the  case.  Nowhere  is  there  any 
evidence  of  a  desire  on  their  part  to  undertake 
an  unbiassed  investigation  of  facts;  nowhere 
proof  of  a  philosophical  examination  of  recent 
occurrences.  Logic  is  thrown  to  the  winds. 
We  are  treated  to  a  flood  of  rhetoric  and  of  un- 
supported statements.  The  assertions  of  the 
Allies  are  flung  away  as  unbelievable,  because 
they  are  from  the  Allies;   the  assumption  being 

that  the  Germans  alone  are  capable  of  telling 

74 


THE   PROPAGANDA  IN  AMERICA    75 

the  truth  in  this  crisis,  and  that  from  the  rest 
of  the  world  there  conies  nothing  but  falsehood. 
This  failure  to  deal  with  the  fundamental  moral 
questions  from  a  detached,  ethical  point  of 
view  may  be  the  inevitable  result  of  the  wave 
of  patriotism  that  has  swept  over  Germany, 
but  it  is  none  the  less  amazing.  The  world  had 
a  right  to  expect  better  things,  even  if  it  could 
not  hope  for  calmness  in  such  a  national  crisis. 
Was  it  not  from  the  German  universities  that 
we  of  the  United  States  learned  everything  we 
know  as  to  the  laboratory  method  of  inquiry 
in  scientific,  economic,  and  historical  fields  ? 
Does  not  that  presuppose  a  cold  assembling  of 
all  the  facts  prior  to  the  forming  of  a  judgment? 
And  has  not  every  German  professor  heretofore 
been  dedicated  to  the  pursuit  of  truth  uninflu- 
enced by  emotion,  without  regard  to  the  injury 
which  thereby  may  inure  to  any  preconceived 
theory,  and  without  consideration  of  the  cher- 
ished opinions  of  the  unthinking  mass? 

Some  of  the  professors  who  have  rushed  into 
print  to  defend  Germany's  cause  have  done  her 
quite  as  much  harm  as  the  enemy.  Take,  for 
instance,  the  appeal  "To  the  Civilized  World," 


76  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

published  by  ninety-three  German  savants. 
Some  of  the  most  distinguished  names  in  Ger- 
many are  signed  to  it  —  Eucken,  Haeckel, 
Fulda,  Humperdinck,  Sudermann,  Hauptmann, 
Lamprecht,  Kaulbach,  Dorpfeld  —  every  one 
notable  in  his  field.  Yet  the  appeal  itself  is 
discreditable  to  their  intelligence,  and  certain 
to  react  against  their  cause,  and  this  quite 
aside  from  the  fact  that  the  English  in  which 
it  is  couched  is  grotesque.  Their  statement  is 
marked  by  a  total  absence  of  logic.  Thus  they 
state  that  "it  is  not  true  that  we  trespassed 
in  neutral  Belgium.  It  has  been  proved  that 
France  and  England  had  resolved  on  such  a 
trespass,  and  it  has  likewise  been  proved  that 
Belgium  had  agreed  to  their  doing  so.  It 
would  have  been  suicide  on  our  part  not  to 
have  been  beforehand." 

Here,  in  the  first  sentence  they  deny  what 
they  admit  in  the  last.  As  for  their  assertions 
in  regard  to  France  and  England,  no  proof 
whatever  is  offered,  or  has  been  offered,  from 
any  source.  The  worst  that  has  been  proved 
is  the  fact  that  England  and  France  had  planned 
how  they  would  act  if  Germany  did  precisely 


THE   PROPAGANDA   IN   AMERICA     77 

what  she  has  done.  To  say  that  it  was  a  viola- 
tion of  neutrality  for  England  and  France  to 
plot  in  advance  how,  if  necessary,  they  would 
perform  the  duties  put  upon  them  by  the  treaty 
establishing  Belgian  neutrality  is  to  offend  the 
intelligence.  More  than  that,  it  appears  from 
a  letter  of  Baron  Griendl,  for  years  Belgian  am- 
bassador at  Berlin,  to  the  Belgian  foreign  min- 
ister that  in  1911  Belgium  wa^s  planning  how  to 
resist  England  if  she  should  be  the  first  to  vio- 
late Belgian  territory.  But  granting,  for  the 
sake  of  argument,  that  the  professors'  conten- 
tion is  true,  what  does  it  boil  down  to?  That 
Germany  violated  a  law  because  some  one  else 
was  going  to.  If  anybody  was  going  to  murder 
Belgian  neutrality,  she  was  going  to  be  first  at 
the  job.  What  a  shocking  position  for  moral- 
ists, for  teachers  of  ethics  and  religion,  to  as- 
sume !  They  had  much  better  fall  back  openly 
upon  the  highwayman's  argument  used  by  the 
German  chancellor  that  he  preferred  the  law 
of  necessity  to  that  laid  down  in  a  "mere  scrap 
of  paper." 

This  attempt  to  justify  a  wrong  by  facts  dis- 
covered after  the  wrong  was  committed,  is  only 


78  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

a  little  less  amazing  than  some  of  the  excuses 
given  for  it  immediately  after  the  attack  upon 
Liege.     Then    it    was    first    alleged    that    fifty 
automobile  loads  of  French  officers  crossed  into 
Belgium   before   any   German   troops   entered; 
next  that  German  cargo-ships  had  been  held  up 
by   the   Belgians;    next   it   was   declared   that 
French  aeroplanes  had  violated  Belgian  sover- 
eignty; and  then  it  was  asserted  in  round  terms 
that  among  the  prisoners  taken  in  the  forts  at 
Liege  and  Namur  were  officers  and  men  of  vari- 
ous French  regiments,  who  had  evidently  been 
there   prior   to   the   declaration   of   war.     The 
number  and  position  of  these  men  vary  with 
every  telling;    but  while  we  have  had  photo- 
graphs of  British  dum-dum  bullets,  and  of  the 
letter  of  a  British  colonel  confessing  his  use  of 
these  forbidden  missiles,  we  have  had  no  photo- 
graphs of  these  particular  French  soldiers.     No 
list  of  the  officers  thus  found  in  guilty  relation- 
ship to  the  Belgian  forts  has  been  forthcoming; 
in  brief,  no  official  proof  has  been  vouchsafed. 
It  has  not  even  been  included  among  the  wrong- 
doings of  the  Allies  which  have  been  officially 
called  to  the  attention  of  the  President  of  the 


THE   PROPAGANDA   IN  AMERICA    79 

United  States  by  Ambassador  von  Bernstorff 
and  his  imperial  master.  Yet  the  ninety-three 
German  savants  do  not  hesitate  to  assert,  upon 
their  honor,  that  there  was  no  breach  of  neu- 
trality whatever.  The  world  may  rub  its  eyes 
if  it  pleases,  but  there  was  no  neutrality  to 
breach;  if  the  world  did  not  know  this  before 
the  present  time,  then  the  world  was  far  behind 
the  all-knowing  German  General  Staff.  That 
the  ninety-three  professors  thereby  deliberately 
contradict  the  German  chancellor's  statement 
that  there  was  a  violation  of  the  law  of  nations 
is  merely  so  much  the  worse  for  the  chancellor, 
who  doubtless  spoke  in  hot  haste  without  pre- 
vious professorial  consultation. 

Next,  the  ninety-three  professors  insist  that 
the  Allies  are  attacking  not  German  militarism 
but  German  civilization,  which  exists  only  by 
reason  of  the  bayonets  with  which  it  bristles. 
What  are  we  to  think  of  all  the  German  teach- 
ings of  philosophy  and  ethics  and  religion  if 
this  be  true  ?  What  kind  of  civilization  is  that 
which  rests  only  upon  force,  and  how  valuable 
is  it  going  to  be  in  the  long  run?  "Have  faith 
in  us,"  the  appeal  concludes  —  faith  that  they 


80  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

will  recover  their  senses.  Faith,  yes;  but  how 
can  one  have  faith  in  their  judgments  here- 
after ?  It  would  be  easy  to  cite  many  similarly 
astonishing  utterances  from  professors,  in  which 
men  of  international  reputation  accept  as  facts 
matters  for  which  no  proof  whatever  is  offered 
or  can  be  offered.  Were  they  to  carry  on  their 
teaching  or  their  scientific  researches  in  any 
such  manner  they  would  be  promptly  expelled 
from  their  chairs.*  But  it  is  not  only  the  Ger- 
man professors  at  home  who  are  hurting  their 
cause  in  the  eyes  of  Americans.  There  is  on 
this  side  of  the  Atlantic  Professor  Munsterberg, 
a  useful  friend  to  the  Allies,  if  unconsciously  so, 
and  there  is  his  Harvard  confrere,  Professor 
Kuno  Francke.  Only  a  few  years  ago  the  latter 
was  writing  books  showing  a  complete  hostility 
to  Kaiser,  bureaucracy,  and  militarism.  Now 
Germany  in  his  eyes  is  almost  beyond  criticism. 
Professor  Eugen  Kiihnemann,  an  exchange 
professor  from  Breslau,  asserted  in  an  address 
in  Boston,  in  September,  that  Germany  ought 

*  Proof  of  this  is  to  be  found  in  Prof.  Karl  Lamprecht's  recent  ad- 
dress in  Berlin,  in  which  he  said  that  with  the  beginning  of  the  war 
"  the  whole  world  was  informed  that  the  Germans  are  very  fine  fel- 
lows; in  this  correspondence-competition  the  professors  took  the  palm. 
The  result  was  dreadful;  not  only  was  there  nothing  gained,  but  much 
harm  was  done." 


THE  PROPAGANDA   IN  AMERICA    81 

not  to  have  violated  Belgian  territory,  but  had 
to  do  it.  This  called  forth  laughter  from  his 
audience,  and  a  pointed  remark  from  the  chair- 
man as  to  the  professor's  irrationality.  To  this 
the  agile  professor  genially  replied  that  "Amer- 
icans did  not  seem  to  understand  that  life  was 
always  irrational "  !  That  Americans  could  only 
hope  to  understand  Germany  if  we  were  situated 
in  America  as  Germany  is  in  Europe,  was  an- 
other of  his  contentions.  Germany,  declared 
Professor  Kiihnemann,  is  "very  much  satisfied 
with  the  state  civilization  has  reached  within  her 
country";  and  he  added:  ''German  militarism  is 
the  concentrated  power  of  self-defense  against  a 
world  of  enemies."  If  it  is  true  that  Germany 
as  a  whole  was  menaced  by  enemies,  it  was 
certainly  not  true  of  her  learned  men.  Never 
was  there  a  group  of  savants  who  had  won  so 
many  men's  affections  and  gratitude  in  every 
country  in  the  world  as  had  German  university 
teachers  prior  to  the  1st  of  August,  1914.  If 
there  were  only  enemies  confronting  their  coun- 
try, it  would  seem  as  if  a  scientific  inquiry  into 
what  classes  of  Germans,  or  what  national  pol- 
icies, were  rousing  such  dangerous  antipathies, 
might  long  ago  have  been  in  order. 


82  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

Fortunately,  there  are  some  signs  that  the 
excesses  of  this  furor  of  the  intellectuals  have 
begun  to  cause  a  reaction  at  home.  Thus  the 
Berlin  Tageblatt  speaks  of  it  as  a  "war  neurosis" 
(Krieg's  Neurose),  and  affirms  that  it  is  every- 
where "assuming  serious  proportions."  "The 
injury,"  it  adds,  "that  it  does  in  the  camps  of 
our  foes  does  not  concern  us,  but  we  should 
gladly  see  its  effects  in  our  own  house  dimin- 
ished." It  also  remarks  that,  while  the  victims 
of  this  disease  in  hostile  lands  —  and  it  cites  the 
cases  of  many  sorely  afflicted  in  Switzerland, 
Italy,  Portugal,  Russia,  England,  and  France  — 
are  careful  not  to  hurt  the  feelings  of  neutral 
states,  the  German  sufferers  from  the  epidemic 
seem  to  go  out  of  their  way  to  deliver  their 
blows  "on  the  stomachs  of  neutrals,"  with  the 
result  that  they  are  increasing  the  enormous 
difficulties  with  which  Germany  is  confronted. 
Some  of  the  German  so-called  intellectual  lead- 
ers have,  it  declares,  "less  political  insight  than 
the  youngest  attache  of  a  legation.  .  .  .  They 
forget  too  easily  that  the  welfare  of  our  soldiers, 
and  the  power  to  see  the  war  through,  depend 
upon  a  hundred  preliminary  conditions  of  ma- 
terial worth,  and  that  in  this  bitterly  earnest 


THE   PROPAGANDA   IN  AMERICA    83 

battle  no  means  of  aid  can  be  spared  and  no 
friendship  is  to  be  treated  as  negligible."  Then 
it  admonishes  the  nation  to  seek  better  political 
knowledge,  and  it  answers  those  of  its  fellow 
countrymen  who  cannot  go  to  the  front  and  ask 
what  they  can  do  to  bridge  over  the  agony  of 
this  terrible  time  with  the  single  word:  "Learn." 
It  is  praiseworthy  advice. 

But  with  the  German  Gelchrtenwelt  thus  swept 
from  its  moorings,  it  was,  of  course,  impossible 
to  expect  anything  else  from  the  press,  or  from 
those  volunteer  societies  "for  spreading  abroad 
the  truth  about  Germany,"  and  the  official 
bodies  which  are  mailing  to  every  ascertainable 
address  printed  matter  exposing  English  mis- 
representations and  presenting  their  holy  cause 
as  they  see  it.  The  systematic  way  in  which 
this  propaganda  has  been  carried  on  is  charac- 
teristically German,  but  in  its  execution  it  has 
lacked  accuracy,  good  judgment,  and  correct 
form.  Special  editions  of  newspapers  in  Ger- 
man and  English  containing  official  despatches 
and  summaries  of  the  news  of  the  war  up  to  the 
time  of  publication  have  been  of  great  value. 
This  cannot  be  said  of  such  publications  as 
"The    Truth    about    Germany,"    a    pamphlet 


84  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

which  has  burdened  the  mail  in  repeated  edi- 
tions, and  has  even  been  placed  on  sale  upon 
our  news-stands,  besides  having  been  reprinted 
in  full  by  one  of  our  New  York  dailies. 

It  contains  much  that  is  true  about  Germany 
and  much  that  is  false,  or  that  conveys  false 
impressions  about  the  war  and  its  origin.  Again 
we  have  outright  assertions  of  happenings  and 
motives,  without  a  shadow  of  proof  to  support 
them.  Thus,  we  learn  that  Servia  was  on  the 
point  of  accepting  Austria's  demands,  "when 
there  arrived  a  despatch  from  St.  Petersburg, 
and  Servia  mobilized,"  the  fact  being,  of  course, 
that  Servia  did  agree  to  everything  which 
Austria  demanded  except  two  conditions,  which 
it  offered  to  submit  to  arbitration,  but  that 
Austria  at  once  declared  the  war  for  which  her 
militarists  had  so  long  been  thirsting.  Again, 
there  appeared  the  flat  falsehood  that  Great 
Britain  "asked  that  Germany  should  allow 
French  and  Belgian  troops  to  form  on  Belgian 
territory  for  a  march  against  our  [the  German] 
frontier."  The  familiar,  unsupported  charge 
that  England  encouraged  the  war  likewise  ap- 
pears.    It  is  with  such  stuff  that  the  German 


THE   PROPAGANDA   IN   AMERICA     85 

public  has  been  fed,  and  returning  American 
travellers  regaled;  it  is  such  stuff  that  has  over- 
burdened our  mails  —  with  complete  lack  of 
appreciation  of  the  fact  that  the  American  is  a 
reasoning  animal  who  recognizes  a  logical  ab- 
surdity when  he  sees  one,  and  knows  the  differ- 
ence between  a  substantiated  fact  and  an  asser- 
tion. 

And  always  this  deluge  of  pro-German  litera- 
ture flows  on,  as  if  the  German  side  were  not 
getting  a  hearing  in  the  American  press.  In 
the  sixth  month  of  the  war  letters  are  still 
coming  from  prominent  Germans,  men  and 
women  of  affairs  and  of  international  experience, 
which  are  based  on  the  assumption  that,  as  the 
German  cables  were  cut,  America  is  seeing  only 
through  British  spectacles.  But,  as  already 
pointed  out,  the  German  cause  has  had  numer- 
ous advocates,  of  whom  the  ablest  is  unquestion- 
ably Doctor  Bernhard  Dernburg,  the  former 
minister  of  colonies,  whose  years  of  residence  in 
New  York  as  a  young  man  have  apparently 
made  him  understand  the  best  method  of  ap- 
pealing to  the  American  public.  But  besides 
these  spokesmen,  besides  the  tons  of  specially 


86  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

prepared  literature  which  have  been  poured  in 
upon  us,  the  mails  have  brought  letters  and 
newspapers  with  amazing  regularity  and  as- 
tounding profusion.  Every  stay-at-home  in 
Germany  with  a  friend  in  the  United  States  has 
felt  it  a  patriotic  duty  to  write  to  that  friend. 
Meanwhile,  the  circulation  of  our  German  news- 
papers, like  the  Staats-Zeitung,  has  everywhere 
gone  up  by  leaps  and  bounds ;  they  are  being  sold 
on  the  streets  as  never  before;  so,  also,  in  New 
York,  has  been  the  Berliner  Tageblatt.  And 
all  are  being  bought  by  thousands  who  favor 
the  Allies,  for  the  express  purpose  of  hearing 
both  sides.  What  our  German  friends  still 
cannot  seem  to  realize,  and  what  will  bear  repe- 
tition here,  is  that  American  public  opinion 
was  not  made  up  by  reports  of  outrages  by 
German  troops,  or  as  a  result  of  the  stupid  and 
even  disgraceful  falsifications  and  suppressions 
of  the  British  censors  —  against  whom  not  only 
the  Germans  but  the  newspapers  of  America 
have  a  just  grievance;  that  it  was  not  formed 
by  emotion  or  by  a  hereditary  affection  for 
England,  but  by  a  calm  study  of  the  facts.  No 
fair-minded  person  can  contend  to-day  that  the 


THE   PROPAGANDA  IN  AMERICA    87 

American  attitude  is  due  to  ignorance  or  to  de- 
ception from  any  source. 

In  view  of  all  this,  American  friends  of  Ger- 
many may  well  ask  themselves  whether  the 
time  has  not  come  to  found,  on  this  side  of  the 
water,  societies  for  the  spreading  of  the  real 
truth  about  Germany  —  "facts  concerning  the 
war"  —  not,  however,  for  action  within  the 
United  States,  but  in  Germany.  There  is  abun- 
dant material  for  such  a  propaganda,  and  there 
is  nothing  in  the  situation  which  would  prevent 
its  being  presented  in  an  entirely  helpful  and 
friendly  spirit.  Thus,  it  might  be  suggested  that 
a  nation  in  arms,  in  the  excitement  of  such  a 
national  calamity,  is  never  in  the  frame  of  mind 
to  render  impartial  judgments  upon  its  own 
acts.  If  examples  of  this  were  needed,  it  would 
be  simple  enough  to  point  to  the  unreasoning 
excitement  of  the  bulk  of  the  American  people 
and  their  yellow-journal  inciters  to  war  in  the 
period,  in  1898,  between  the  blowing  up  of  the 
Maine  and  the  declaration  of  hostilities,  and  to 
show  how  our  public  opinion  in  regard  to  the 
Philippines  underwent  a  remarkable  chastening 
after  the  delirious  days  of  May,  1898,  when  the 


88  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

country  was  dazzled  by  the  thought  that  the 
sun  would  thenceforth  never  set  on  the  American 
flag.  Similarly,  the  exaltation  of  the  French 
nation  in  1870,  with  its  full  belief  in  the  justice 
of  its  cause,  underwent  a  complete  transforma- 
tion when  victory  failed  to  perch  upon  its  ban- 
ners. It  will  be  hard,  of  course,  to  induce  Ger- 
many to  apply  any  lessons  to  herself  from  the 
experience  of  others,  for,  as  Professor  Kiihne- 
mann  indicates,  she  is  so  self-satisfied,  so  cer- 
tain that  her  Kultur  surpasses  any  other,  that 
she  may  feel  it  beneath  her  to  think  that  she 
might  profit  by  lessons  drawn  from  abroad. 
Nevertheless,  the  effort  is  worth  making.  Al- 
ready the  German  press  and  soldiers  are  begin- 
ning to  admit  that  they  held  a  totally  erroneous 
view  of  their  English  soldier  antagonists,  the 
despised  English  "hirelings";  that  they  under- 
estimated the  strength  of  the  Russians  and  the 
ability  of  their  leaders.  As  the  evident  miscal- 
culations of  the  German  General  Staff  and  their 
country's  diplomatic  blunders  begin  to  dawn 
upon  them,  their  minds  may  be  opened  a  little 
to  arguments  and  facts  which  make  against 
their  contentions. 


THE   PROPAGANDA   IN   AMERICA     89 

Even  now,  however,  a  genuine  service  would 
be  rendered  if  there  could  be  brought  to  Ger- 
many's attention  the  simple  facts  of  her  own 
censorship,  with  its  refusal  to  permit  criticism 
of  the  powers  that  be.  Few  Germans  seem  to 
know  that  their  own  diplomatic  despatches  were 
not  always  printed  in  full,  but  appeared  as  edited 
by  the  authorities.  So  far  as  has  been  ascer- 
tained, no  German  publication  of  the  complete 
English  and  French  documents  has  been  at- 
tempted ;  the  public  has  learned  of  them  almost 
wholly  through  partisan  comments  by  their  own 
editors.  Thus,  the  writer  has  been  unable  to 
discover  in  the  German  papers  to  which  he  has 
had  access  any  fair  discussion  or  publication  of 
Belgium's  official  statement  of  her  side  of  the 
case,  and  the  documents  bearing  thereon.  Of 
all  the  literature  of  the  war,  nothing  is  more 
impressive  and  convincing  than  this.  But  the 
New  Yorker  Staats-Zcitung,  for  one,  made  haste 
to  abridge  and  bury  it  in  an  inconspicuous  place. 
True,  it  might  be  waved  aside  upon  the  familiar 
assumption  that  all  else  is  lies  save  what  is 
German  or  Austrian ;  yet  we  cannot  but  believe 
that,  if  there  is  anvthing  left  whatever  of  the 


90  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

old  German  devotion  to  scientific  truth,  its 
perusal  must  at  least  recall  to  the  reader's 
mind  that  there  are  two  sides  to  every  case. 

It  would  certainly  do  no  German  any  harm 
to-day  if  he  should  learn  that  on  the  29th  of 
April,  1913,  Herr  von  Jagow,  Secretary  of  State, 
declared  at  the  meeting  of  the  Budget  Com- 
mittee of  the  Reichstag:  "Belgium's  neutrality 
is  provided  for  by  international  convention,  and 
Germany  is  determined  to  respect  those  con- 
ventions." He  might  also  read  that  on  August 
2,  1914,  the  German  minister  at  Brussels,  Herr 
von  Below-Selaske,  stated  to  the  Belgian  min- 
ister for  foreign  affairs  that  he  had  not  been  in- 
structed to  make  an  official  communication, 
"but  that  we  (the  Belgian  Government)  knew 
his  personal  opinion  as  to  the  feelings  of  security 
which  we  had  the  right  to  entertain  toward  our 
eastern  neighbors."  "I  at  once  replied,"  said 
the  Belgian  minister,  "that  we  knew  their  in- 
tentions, as  indicated  in  numerous  previous 
conversations,  did  not  allow  us  to  doubt  their 
perfect  correctness  toward  Belgium."  Yet  on 
the  same  date,  the  same  German  minister  at 
Brussels  presented  the  German  ultimatum  which 


THE   PROPAGANDA   IN   AMERICA    91 

resulted   in   the  violation   of   Belgian   neutral- 
ity ! 

It  would  also  not  be  amiss  for  those  Germans 
who  ponder  over  the  failure  of  the  neutral  na- 
tions to  sympathize  with  Germany,  to  read  once 
more  the  telegram  of  the  Kaiser  to  the  King  of 
England,  of  August  1,  1914,  in  which  the  Kaiser 
says:  "The  troops  on  my  frontier  are  in  the  act 
of  being  stopped  by  telegraph  and  telephone 
from  crossing  into  France.''''  The  significance  of 
this  to  American  readers  lies  in  the  Kaiser's 
astounding  admission  that  mobilization  against 
France  meant  immediate  invasion  of  France 
before  any  declaration  of  war.  Had  this  fact 
been  publicly  known  or  really  understood  in 
Germany,  it  ought  surely  to  have  prevented 
the  repeated  assertions  that  France  began  the 
war  by  sending  her  aviators  over  German  terri- 
tory, by  the  entrance  of  armed  patrols,  a  sudden 
attack  in  Lorraine,  etc.  For  it  is  evident  from 
the  Kaiser's  own  words  that  long-prepared 
orders  to  invade  French  soil  sent  some  of  his 
troops  onto  it  the  instant  the  first  order  to 
mobilize  appeared.  ^Yllether  those  troops  did 
any  damage  or  not,  or  reached  French  territory 


92  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

or  not,  before  war  was  declared,  is  unimportant. 
The  intent  to  rush  right  onto  French  soil  before 
peace  was  officially  ended  is  here  admitted.  It 
is  thoroughly  in  keeping  with  the  conversation 
of  General  von  Moltke,  in  May,  1913,  reported 
by  the  French  ambassador  to  Berlin,  that  "we 
[the  Germans]  must  begin  war  without  waiting, 
in  order  brutally  to  crush  all  resistance."  This 
has  been  denied  in  Germany,  but  it  is  in  keep- 
ing with  the  attitude  of  leading  militarists,  and 
was,  perhaps,  one  of  the  bits  of  evidence  that 
led  Italy  to  reject  outright  Germany's  claim  that 
Italy  must  come  to  her  aid  because  she  had  been 
attacked.  At  any  rate,  the  German  propagan- 
dists who  seek  to  conquer  hostile  American  opin- 
ion must  find  some  way  of  getting  around  the 
Kaiser's  despatch.  Its  revelation  of  what  Ger- 
man mobilization  really  meant  does,  however,  in 
some  degree  explain  why  it  was  that  the  Kaiser 
and  his  military  associates  were  so  alarmed  by 
the  mere  fact  of  Russian  mobilization. 

The  German  public  could  never  have  learned 
from  "The  Truth  about  Germany"  what  it 
probably  does  not  clearly  understand  to-day, 
that  the  Kaiser's  government  sent  ultimata  to 


THE   PROPAGANDA   IN  AMERICA    93 

Paris  and  to  Petrograd  on  the  very  day  upon 
which  Russia  had  offered  to  "maintain  a  wait- 
ing attitude"  if  Austria  would  "stay  the  march 
of  her  troops"  into  Servia,  and  permit  the  Great 
Powers  to  examine  what  satisfaction  Servia 
could  give  to  Austro-Hungary  "without  injury 
to  her  rights  as  a  sovereign  state  and  to  her  in- 
dependence." Americans  certainly  have  had  to 
learn  of  this  from  other  than  German  sources. 
Would  it  not  be  a  fitting  return  for  the  earnest 
efforts  made  to  cure  us  of  our  ignorance  if  an 
American  truth  society  should  circulate  this 
widely  in  Germany? 

Again,  without  wishing  to  be  critical  or  to 
injure  anybody,  such  a  society  might  be  of 
value  by  reminding  the  German  public  that,  ex- 
cellent as  its  press  is,  it  has  nevertheless  been 
guilty  of  that  tendency  to  print  falsities  which 
is  an  inevitable  accompaniment  of  war.  The 
mere  existence  of  a  rigid  censorship  puts  a 
premium  upon  rumor  and  scandalous  accusa- 
tions against  the  enemy,  of  which  both  sides 
have  been  victims  in  this  war.  Did  not  an 
official  German  despatch  report  the  British 
army  surrounded  ?     Has  not  the  increase  and 


94  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

decrease  in  the  number  of  Russian  prisoners  in 
Germany    presented    a    mathematical    puzzle? 
As  for  the  prophecies  and  reports  in  regard  to 
events  in  South  Africa,  Ireland,  India,  Egypt, 
and  the  Caucasus,  to  say  nothing  of  Turkey, 
and  the  Holy  War,  a  compilation  of  these  would 
make  sorry  reading  to-day  even  if  it  be  ad- 
mitted—  as  it  must  be  in  all  fairness  —  that 
the   news   of  the   German   press   and   German 
official   despatches   have   proved,   as   a   whole, 
more  reliable  than  those  of  Russia,  or  France, 
or  England.     But  it  is  emphatically  a  case  of 
the  pot  calling  the  kettle  black;  a  vast  amount 
of  misinformation  has  everywhere  seen  the  light 
—  which  makes  our  proposed  American  propa- 
ganda in  Germany  all  the  more  inviting. 

One  of  the  first  tasks  would  have  to  be  the 
refuting  of  the  long  article  published  in  the 
Vossische  Zeitung  by  Doctor  Ludwig  Stein,  en- 
titled "The  Change  of  Opinion  in  America." 
In  this  extraordinary  screed  he  maintains  that 
there  has  been  a  complete  reversal  of  our  judg- 
ment upon  the  war,  thanks  to  the  pro-German 
propaganda  of  Doctor  Dernburg  and  others, 
and  to  Count  von  Bernstorff's  capture  of  the 


THE   PROPAGANDA   IN   AMERICA     95 

worst  of  our  American  journalists  —  with  whom 
not  even  a  sorely  tried  ambassador  ought,  be  it 
said  in  passing,  to  associate.  Our  American 
society  would  have  to  seek  to  make  it  clear 
that  this  sort  of  misinformation  does  infinite 
harm  when  reprinted  in  America  because  it  pro- 
duces the  impression  that  German  publicists 
are  quite  untrustworthy.  Similarly,  our  Ameri- 
can society  would  have  to  explain  early  in  its 
propaganda  that  efforts  to  make  Americans 
understand  that  Bernhardi's  book  was  known 
only  to  a  handful  of  readers,  that  it  was  almost 
wholly  unknown  in  university  circles,  and  is 
to-day  not  to  be  found  in  many  important 
German  libraries,  are  gravely  handicapped  by 
such  a  speech  as  that  recently  made  by  the 
commanding  general  in  Hamburg,  Major-Gen- 
eral  von  Roehl.  Speaking  under  the  statue  of 
Kaiser  Wilhelm  I,  and,  he  said,  exactly  in  the 
spirit  of  the  great  Kaiser's  grandson,  Wilhelm 
II,  he  declared:  "We  shall  not  again  sheathe 
our  sharp  and  just  sword  until  the  last  of  our 
enemies  recognizes  that  only  one  people  has 
the  right  to  play  a  leading  part  in  the  political 
world,  and  that  people  is  the  German  people." 


96  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

When  Americans  read  this  they  not  unnaturally 
feel  that  while  this  may  be  largely  soldier  brag- 
gadocio, the  ineffable  nonsense  which  is  an  in- 
evitable accompaniment  of  militarism  gone  mad, 
it  nevertheless  bears  out  those  who  assert  that, 
if  Bernhardiism  is  but  little  known  in  German 
academic  circles,  it  has  permeated  the  German 
army  and  insidiously  affected  the  leaders  of 
political  thought  to  a  greater  extent  than  any- 
body had  realized  until  the  explosion  came. 

If  General  von  Roehl  is  to  be  dismissed  merely 
as  a  military  blockhead,  like  some  of  our  Amer- 
ican talking  generals,  Professor  Ernst  Haeckel 
cannot  be  thus  waved  away.  Our  American 
society  for  informing  Germany  could  have  no 
more  pressing  duty  than  to  make  German  edi- 
tors understand  that  Professor  Haeckel  injures 
not  merely  his  own  high  and  international  re- 
pute, but  that  of  all  Germany  as  well,  when  he 
calmly  sets  down  this  programme  as  his  view  of 
what  steps  Germany  should  take  to  "reorganize 
Europe  on  Teutonic  lines"  when  victory  is  hers: 

"1.  The  crushing  of  the  English  tyranny. 

"2.  The  invasion  of  Great  Britain  and  the 
occupation  of  London.  / 


THE   PROPAGANDA   IN   AMERICA     97 

"3.  The  division  of  Belgium.  The  largest 
portion,  from  Ostend  to  Antwerp  in  the  west,  to 
be  a  confederated  German  state;  the  northern 
part  to  be  given  to  Holland;  the  southeastern 
part  to  be  given  to  Luxemburg,  which  thus  en- 
larged becomes  also  a  confederated  German 
state. 

"4.  A  large  number  of  the  British  colonies 
and  the  Congo  Free  State  to  go  to  Germany. 

"5.  France  to  surrender  to  Germany  some  of 
her  northeastern  frontier  provinces. 

"6.  Russia  to  be  rendered  impotent  by  the 
reconstitution,  under  Austrian  auspices,  of  the 
kingdom  of  Poland. 

"7.  The  German  provinces  of  the  Baltic  to 
be  returned  to  the  German  Empire. 

"8.  Finland,  united  with  Sweden,  to  become 
an  independent  kingdom." 

Our  proposed  society  could  not  be  too  earnest 
in  impressing  upon  its  German  listeners  that 
when  such  a  programme,  with  its  cold-blooded 
division  of  Belgium,  is  published  over  here  it 
strikes  fire  from  every  honest  American  heart, 
however  inconsistently  —  or  consistently  —  the 
head  above  that  heart  may  view  our  holding 


98  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

the  Philippines  despite  the  protests  of  the  Fil- 
ipino people. 

Next,  our  society  for  spreading  the  truth 
abroad  could  point  out  to  German  leaders  of 
thought  that  the  very  furor  of  their  foreign 
propaganda  bespeaks  genuine  provincialism; 
that  it  is  as  dangerous  to  defend  too  much  as 
to  protest  too  much.  The  very  certainty  of 
their  own  superiority  which  they  voice  also  sug- 
gests the  desirability  of  a  nearer  view  and  a 
keener  understanding  of  other  people's  Kultur. 
To  Americans  it  inevitably  recalls  the  boasting 
of  the  Confederates  in  1861,  and  their  loud  and 
truculent  assertions  that  the  culture  of  their 
aristocracy  of  wealth  and  land  founded  upon 
slave  labor  was  superior  to  any  the  world  had 
ever  seen.  German  glorification  of  their  own 
greatness  if  anything  surpasses  that  1861  out- 
burst of  self-praise.  One  usually  sound  thinker 
insists:  "We  are  morally  and  intellectually 
superior  beyond  all  comparison  as  to  our  organi- 
zations and  institutions.  .  .  .  We  Germans 
have  no  friends  anywhere,  because  we  are  ef- 
ficient and  morally  superior  to  all."  Then  we 
have  the  Kreuz  Zeitung,  the  organ  of  the  mili- 


THE  PROPAGANDA   IN  AMERICA    90 

tary,  saying  that  "The  world  can  be  revitalized, 
society  ennobled  and  refined,  only  through  the 
German  spirit.  The  world  must  for  its  own 
salvation  be  Germanized." 

Just  as  the  Germans  are  coming  to  change 
their  opinion  about  their  British  antagonists,  so 
did  the  Confederates  speedily  forget  their  early 
boasts  that  one  Rebel  could  account  for  six 
Yankees.  As  the  Confederates,  equally  cer- 
tain of  the  justice  of  their  cause,  and  equally 
united,  came  to  face  the  world  in  1865  with  a 
new  point  of  view,  and  without  their  early  be- 
lief in  their  own  superiority  because  of  King 
Cotton,  so  must  the  German  point  of  view 
undergo  a  radical  sea  change  before  this  great 
struggle  ends.  It  would  be  quite  as  proper  for 
our  society  for  spreading  the  truth  to  prepare 
the  way  for  this  in  Germany  by  judicious  his- 
torical parallels,  as  it  is  for  Germans  to  en- 
deavor to  convince  Americans  that  it  is  right 
for  a  great  nation  to  trample  under  foot  another 
people  because  in  her  judgment  her  welfare 
demands  that  the  weaker  shall  pay  the  price. 

Thus  one  might  point  out  indefinitely  the 
tempting    opportunity    which    would    loom    up 


100  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

before  our  proposed  organization.  For  years 
to  come  —  if  the  war  should  last  long  —  it 
would  have  subjects  galore.  The  least  of  its 
tasks  would  be  to  point  out  to  our  Teuton 
brethren  that  it  aids  their  case  not  at  all  to  con- 
vict Great  Britain  of  hypocrisy,  as  Treitschke 
endeavors  to  do,  or  any  one  else  of  inconsistency. 
No  one  who  really  believes  in  liberty  will  par- 
don England  for  her  treatment  of  the  Boers,  or 
her  shameless  connivance  at  the  violating  of 
Persia.  But  guilty  humanity  moves  forward  to 
higher  ideals  by  fits  and  starts;  to  the  neutral 
world  the  devotion  of  the  British  people  to  the 
idealistic  defense  of  Belgium,  which  has  been 
assumed  by  her  ministers  as  the  real  cause  of 
the  war,  seems  something  to  be  acclaimed.  The 
peace  treaty  may,  of  course,  show  that  this  as- 
serted cause  cloaks  for  England's  rulers  merely 
a  sordid  desire  to  crush  down  their  most  danger- 
ous trade  rival,  as  the  Germans  contend.  But 
meanwhile  the  outsider  must  take  it  at  its  face 
value  when  he  sees  millions  of  British  citizens 
ready  to  give  up  their  lives  unselfishly  in  behalf 
of  this  principle  of  the  sacredness  of  the  existence 
of  small  nations,  and  must  assume  that  here- 


THE  PROPAGANDA  IN  AMERICA     101 

after  the  weaker  countries  will  at  least  be  safe 
from  British  lust  of  land.  Even  a  sudden  Brit- 
ish conversion  is  better  than  no  conversion  at 
all;  however  the  Germans  may  rail,  the  neutral 
world  is  not  disposed  to  cavil  at  the  spectacle 
of  a  great  nation,  whatever  its  past,  ready  to 
bleed  near  to  death,  if  need  be,  that  a  smaller 
may  live. 

Then,  some  one  in  Germany  ought  to  direct 
German  attention  to  the  case  of  France.  She 
has  found  it  necessary  to  initiate  no  propaganda 
abroad  in  behalf  of  her  soldiery,  her  motives,  or 
her  policy.  Not  for  an  hour  has  her  President 
had  to  worry  as  to  what  the  neutral  world  would 
think  of  her.  It  regrets,  of  course,  that  so 
great  a  nation  was  compelled  to  war  merely  be- 
cause of  an  accursed  treaty  with  as  autocratic 
a  power  as  Russia  —  with  which  the  real  soul 
of  France  can  have  no  genuine  spiritual  com- 
munion. But  the  onlookers  abroad  know  that 
France  has  borne  herself  with  rare  dignity  and 
restraint;  that  her  moral  position  is  clearer  and 
more  shining  than  that  of  any  other  of  the  com- 
batants; that  she  has  revealed  a  fortitude  in 
defeat  and  a  resoluteness  to  succeed  in  the  end 


102  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

which,  together  with  unexpected  qualities  of 
self-control,  command  the  admiration  of  all 
who  behold  with  unprejudiced  eyes.  The  na- 
tion of  Lafayette,  of  De  Grasse,  of  Rocham- 
beau,  has  lived  up  to  its  very  best. 

An  American  society  which  attempted  to  say 
this  might  just  now  have  a  rather  sorry  time  in 
Germany.  It  could  at  least  certify  that  Maxi- 
milian Harden  comes  close  to  the  truth  when, 
in  giving  up  the  effort  to  win  over  Americans 
to  his  country's  cause,  he  admits  that  we  are 
well  informed  as  to  the  German  arguments,  but 
cannot  be  convinced  because  we  cannot  think 
like  Germans.  It  would  note  with  regret  that 
the  Deutsche  Tageszeitung  thus  wrongly  counsels 
its  countrymen:  "We,  however,  do  not  need  to 
regard  the  public  opinion  of  the  world.  In  the 
last  instance,  the  German  people,  united  with 
the  Emperor,  are  alone  competent  to  decide  the 
correctness  of  Germany's  cause,"  for  it  would 
be  its  duty  to  point  out  that  no  country  is  strong 
enough  to-day  to  do  without  the  favorable 
opinion  of  all  mankind.  As  for  Herr  Harden, 
perhaps  he,  too,  may  yet  see  that  if  Americans 
cannot  think  like  Germans  just  now,  it  is  be- 


THE   PROPAGANDA   IN  AMERICA     103 

cause  their  love  of  fair  play,  their  historic  sym- 
pathy for  those  who  battle  for  liberty,  yes,  their 
institutions,  forbid. 


V 

THE  KAISER  AND  THE  WAR 

FEW  masters  of  nations  have  been  as 
heartily  abused  or  as  highly  praised  as 
the  Kaiser.  In  this  respect  he  invites 
comparison  with  the  first  Napoleon;  in  the  case 
of  both  emperors  the  extremes  of  praise  and 
blame  have  been  unjust.  Americans,  on  the 
whole,  have  been  rather  disposed  to  patronize 
the  Kaiser.  Thus,  one  of  our  captains  of  in- 
dustry assured  the  head  of  the  Hohenzollern 
that  he  would  go  well  in  tandem  with  Theodore 
Roosevelt.  Wlien  the  Kaiser  quickly  asked, 
"Which  would  be  the  wheel-horse?"  the  mag- 
nate was  trapped  and  at  a  loss  to  answer.  An 
entertaining  magazine  writer  condescendingly 
assured  us  that  the  Kaiser  "is  of  the  stuff  that 
would  have  made  a  first-rate  American,"  and 
"the  real  Kaiser"  has  been  done  for  us  more 
than  once,  usually  with  a  liberal  percentage  of 
error,   not   unmixed   with   considerable   respect 

104 


THE   KAISER  AND  THE   WAR    105 

for  bis  achievements.  The  average  American 
is  apt  to  consider  that  a  king  is  necessarily  a 
mere  lay  figure;  hence  the  surprise  one  notes 
when  one  of  our  countrymen  has  come  into  con- 
tact with  the  Kaiser  and  found  him  to  be  not 
merely  a  wearer  of  innumerable  uniforms,  and 
an  egotistical  defender  of  the  divine  rights  of 
sovereigns,  but  a  many-sided  man  of  ability  as 
remarkable  as  the  contradictions  in  his  char- 
acter, his  words,  and  his  conduct. 

Extraordinary  has  been  the  development  of 
his  personality  by  reason  of  his  responsibilities 
and  his  powers.  This  is  not  always  the  case 
with  commoners  or  with  royalty,  as  the  present 
Czar  of  Russia  proves  quite  well  enough.  When 
the  Kaiser  ascended  the  throne,  after  the 
tragically  brief  reign  and  still  more  tragic  death 
of  his  father,  few  outside  of  the  Prince's  imme- 
diate entourage  suspected  the  latent  possibilities 
of  his  mind,  or  the  inherent  force  of  his  charac- 
ter. Until  his  father's  illness  the  possibility 
of  his  succession  had  seemed  so  remote  that  few 
thought  it  worth  while  to  pay  much  attention 
to  the  Prince  of  Prussia,  just  become  Crown 
Prince.     Those    men    in    public   life    who   had 


106  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

studied  him  feared  him,  because  of  some  im- 
perialistic speeches  which  are  recalled  now  to 
show  that  his  callow,  eldest  son  is  rightfully  the 
heir  of  his  own  boyish  point  of  view.  There 
was  as  much  dread  lest  he  plunge  Germany  into 
war  when  he  ascended  the  throne  as  there  was 
similar  fear  in  certain  circles  in  America  when 
the  assassin's  bullet  made  Mr.  Roosevelt  Presi- 
dent. In  both  instances  the  fear  was  not  justi- 
fied. Mr.  Roosevelt  kept  the  peace,  and  so  did 
the  Kaiser  for  twenty-six  years  of  his  reign. 

No  one  who  was  not  in  Germany  at  the  time 
can  fully  appreciate  the  shock  to  the  entire 
country  when  Bismarck  was  dismissed  like  a 
lackey,  as  Bismarck  himself  put  it.  That  the 
Kaiser  was  able  to  live  this  down  and  so  win 
the  affections  of  his  people  that  this  is  not  laid 
up  against  him  any  longer,  must  be  regarded  as 
perhaps  his  greatest  personal  achievement;  for 
at  the  time  it  seemed  like  laying  ruthless  hands 
upon  what  was  most  sacred  in  the  life  of  the 
young  nation,  or  turning  it  adrift  on  uncharted 
seas  for  which  there  was  no  pilot,  since  the 
public  had  somehow  come  to  feel  that  this  dis- 
missed pilot  was  going  to  live  on  forever.     Yet 


THE   KAISER   AND  THE   WAR     107 

this  was  not  the  only  time  the  Kaiser  offended. 
He  seemed  unstable  and  constitutionally  rest- 
less; striving  after  the  new  and  the  untried, 
seeking  to  govern  entirely  in  his  own  way,  and 
bent  continually  on  rattling  his  sabre.  It  is  a 
long  distance  from  that  to  the  present  day, 
when  he  is  pictured  as  a  conservative,  as  the 
greatest  friend  of  peace  among  modern  monarchs. 
And  yet  the  transformation  has  gone  on  under 
our  very  eyes  these  last  twenty  years. 

If  the  Kaiser  indeed  proved  to  be  a  friend  of 
peace  until  put  to  the  supreme  test,  he  has 
never  outgrown  a  duality  of  character  as  marked 
as  that  of  his  nation.  This  duality,  Prince  von 
Biilow  asserts,  explains  "many  a  curious  phe- 
nomenon in  the  present,  as  in  the  past,"  both 
in  the  life  of  the  country  and  of  its  individual 
citizens.  Thus  the  Kaiser  may  follow  up  a  re- 
actionary, autocratic  outburst  with  a  speech 
both  enlightened  and  constructive.  He  is  at 
one  moment  a  War  Lord  in  utterance,  garbed 
like  Lohengrin,  and  in  the  next  a  civilian  deeply 
concerned  with  the  industrial  development  of 
his  state.  He  sets  his  face  against  any  democ- 
racy in  the  army,  and  —  until  now  —  against 


108  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

the  reception  of  Jews  as  officers  in  any  but  staff 
positions,  and  at  the  same  time  selects  the  Jew 
Bernhard  Dernburg  to  be  the  first  imperial 
minister  of  his  race,  and  makes  almost  an  inti- 
mate of  Herr  Ballin,  the  brilliant  head  of  the 
Hamburg-American  Line.  He  is  broad  enough 
to  permit  officers  to  drink  his  health  in  water, 
and  to  become  total  abstainers  if  they  choose, 
but  too  narrow  to  stamp  out  duelling  among 
them.  He  is  mediaeval  one  moment,  and  abreast 
of  the  times  the  next.  One  month  may  see  him 
guilty  of  a  dangerous  political  indiscretion  and 
the  next  find  him  showing  tact  and  skill  in  a 
political  situation  affecting  the  nation  alone. 

Nor  are  the  contradictions  of  his  acts  limited 
to  domestic  affairs.  He  was  the  man  who  or- 
dered his  Pekin-bound  troops  to  wage  ferocious 
war  upon  the  Chinese;  who  was  quite  ready  to 
seize  Kiau-Chau,  and  to  legitimize  the  transac- 
tion by  a  long-term  "lease,"  which  the  landlord 
did  not  draw  and  did  not  want,  and  had  no 
option  but  to  sign.  He  was  quite  willing  to  put 
his  blood-and-iron  policy  into  force  in  German 
Southwest  Africa.  He  was  as  ready  to  have 
his  generals  drive  thirty  thousand  Herreros  out 


THE   KAISER  AND  THE   WAR     109 

in  the  desert,  there  to  die  of  thirst  and  starva- 
tion, as  he  was  to  crush  Belgium  when  she  lay- 
in  his  path,  if  thereby  German  civilization  and 
Kultur  could  be  maintained  in  that  far-off,  hope- 
less and  hapless  African  colony.  Yet  this  mas- 
ter of  contrasts  could  send  his  telegram  to  Presi- 
dent Kriiger  voicing  the  very  general  condemna- 
tion of  British  aggression  in  South  Africa.  Effi- 
cient in  administration  at  home  in  most  ways, 
he  and  his  advisers  have  been  singularly  ineffi- 
cient abroad;  not,  as  is  now  alleged  on  their 
behalf,  because  their  diplomats  were  so  honest 
and  guileless  as  constantly  to  be  outtrumped, 
and  in  1914  to  be  wholly  overreached,  but  be- 
cause of  disregard  of  other  people's  feelings, 
because  of  such  dangerous  rudeness  as  marked 
the  conduct  of  Admiral  von  Diederichs  at 
Manila  in  1898,  because  too  much  Prussian 
arrogance  was  often  allowed  to  slip  into  the 
tone  of  diplomatic  correspondence,  and  for  still 
other  reasons  dwelt  on  elsewhere.  So  there  are 
Germans  in  plenty  to  agree  with  the  Berliner 
Tageblatt  that  this  is  the  time  for  them  to  say 
nothing  about  the  Kaiser's  diplomats  and  diplo- 
macy.    Only  the  visit  of  Prince  Henry  to  the 


110  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

United  States  stands  out  as  particularly  credit- 
able to  the  Kaiser's  sense  of  the  fitness  of  things 
abroad,  which  so  often  serves  him  well  in  home 
affairs. 

Nevertheless,  during  the  years  of  his  rule  the 
Kaiser  has  steadily  grown  more  and  more  pop- 
ular as  he  has  become  more  conservative  in  his 
personality.  This  is  partly  because  of  his  dra- 
matic skill,*  and  partly  because  of  his  ability  to 
play  on  almost  every  one  of  the  many  strings 
that  lead  to  the  hearts  of  his  people.  The  army 
is  devoted  to  him  as  its  War  Lord,  even  though 
its  superior  officers  are  not  all  convinced  that 
he  is  a  great  strategist.  The  church  people 
reverence  him  because  of  his  blameless  private 
life,  the  simplicity  and  purity  of  his  family 
circle,  and  his  religious  faith  and  constant  refer- 
ences to  the  Almighty  in  his  public  utterances. 
Tie  won  the  hearts  of  all  fathers  and  mothers  by 
his  exquisite  speech  at  the  wedding  of  his  daugh- 
ter two  years  ago  —  a  masterpiece  of  felicitous 
expression,  pervaded  by  a  note  of  deep  affection, 

*  Baron  Fritz  von  Holstein,  for  sixteen  years  the  real  power  behind 
the  throne  in  the  German  foreign  office,  is  said  to  have  once  remarked 
caustically  that  his  Majesty  "  takes  a  dramatic  result  for  a  political 
success." 


THE  KAISER  AND  THE  WAR    111 

and  imbued  with  real  appreciation  of  the  true 
values  of  life.  The  commercial  world  looks  up 
to  him,  not  because  he  has  been  solely  respon- 
sible for  the  nation's  wonderful  economic  devel- 
opment, as  some  would  have  it,  for  that  would 
have  come  to  pass  if  he  had  ruled  only  one  year, 
but  because  he  has  identified  himself  with  all 
its  interests,  and  has  sought  to  further  the  mar- 
vellous wave  of  development  which  was  coming 
in  on  a  rising  tide  when  he  assumed  the  reins. 
For  the  first  time,  its  leaders  have  been  sought 
by  a  Kaiser.  Capitalists,  too,  are  pleased  with 
the  policy  of  the  state  in  regard  to  the  great 
combinations  approximating  to  our  trusts;  they 
have  no  such  criticisms  of  their  government  as 
have  had  some  of  ours  during  the  necessary 
period  of  reorganization  and  control  by  legis- 
lative enactment  through  which  we  in  America 
have  just  passed. 

The  literary,  artistic,  and  musical  worlds  do 
not  take  the  Kaiser's  own  creations  seriously, 
but  they  see  in  him  a  sympathetic  friend,  a  wise 
royal  patron,  even  though  he  may  have  the 
poorest  taste  when  it  comes  to  sculptures  of  his 
ancestors.     The  Junker,  the  great  landowners, 


112  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

and  the  aristocrats  find  him  wholly  satisfactory 
because  of  his  stubborn  refusal  to  countenance 
any  radical  or  liberal  tendencies,  his  opposi- 
tion to  the  Social-Democrats,  and  his  upholding 
of  unjust  Prussian  suffrage  laws  —  defended  as 
a  necessary  safeguard  to  prevent  the  Social- 
Democrats  from  capturing  Prussia.  The  aris- 
tocrats who  come  to  Berlin  for  their  brief  season 
of  six  weeks  rejoice  in  the  Emperor's  rigid  up- 
holding of  the  historic  ceremonial  of  the  court, 
and  his  deference  to  caste,  even  though  he  ad- 
mits commercial  men  to  the  intimacy  of  his 
yacht. 

Imperialistic  professors  and  statesmen  find 
themselves  in  fullest  accord  with  his  views  as  to 
the  empire's  expansion  and  his  creation  of  a 
fleet,  if  only  to  "protect  our  oversea  trade,"  as 
the  phrase  has  run.  Officialdom,  which  is  the 
greatest  caste  in  Germany  next  to  the  army,  is 
wholly  imbued  with  the  idea  that  the  Kaiser  is 
the  ideal  ruler.  So  far  from  hurting  him,  his 
deliberately  spectacular  methods  have  helped 
not  a  little,  precisely  as  his  interest  in  sports 
and  sailing  has  captured  the  younger  genera- 
tion, and  helped  to  give  athletics  as  rapid  and 


THE   KAISER  AND  THE   WAR     113 

wide  a  growth  in  twenty-five  years  as  that  of 
any  of  the  great  industries,  whose  expansion 
has  partaken  of  the  phenomenal.  President 
Roosevelt  showed  how  the  masses  like  a  ruler 
who  "does  things  every  minute."  The  Ger- 
mans are  tremendously  taken  by  a  ruler  who 
cruises  to  the  north  in  the  summer  and  has  a 
villa  at  Corfu  during  the  winter;  who  sails  his 
own  racing  yacht,  commands  the  fleet  he  has 
created,  and  leads  impossible  cavalry  charges 
in  peace  manoeuvres  —  all  the  while  dabbling 
in  the  arts  and  sciences.  They  have  long  since 
forgotten  that  witticism  which  early  in  Wil- 
helm  the  Second's  reign  described  his  grand- 
father, his  father,  and  himself  as  the  "greise 
Kaiser,"  the  "weise  Kaiser,"  and  the  "reise 
Kaiser"  (the  aged  Kaiser,  the  wise  Kaiser,  and 
the  travelling  Kaiser). 

Prince  von  Biilow  complains  because  the  Ger- 
mans, whenever  they  have  found  an  intellectual 
formula  or  a  system  for  anything,  insist  "with 
obstinate  perseverance  on  fitting  realities  into 
the  system."  Truly,  the  Kaiser  has  made  his 
type  of  ruler  a  reality  to  his  people,  and  they 
have  so  readily  fitted  him  into  their  system  that 


114  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

they  applauded  him  even  when  he  declared  to 
some  recruits  that  by  the  oath  they  were  taking 
"you  are  pledged  to  give  your  lives  to  me."  In 
this  they  see  nothing  inconsistent  with  the  prog- 
ress and  aims  of  what  is  in  many  matters  of 
government  the  most  advanced  of  states.  Nor 
do  they  resent  his  incessant  use  of  the  personal 
pronoun  in  describing  things  which  are  the  na- 
tion's, such  as  its  army  and  its  navy.  Surely, 
there  could  be  no  greater  contrast  than  that 
between  the  first  and  the  second  Emperor  Wil- 
liam, yet  the  difference  in  their  conceptions  of 
what  the  headship  of  the  nation  means  is,  per- 
haps, a  true  measure  of  the  nation's  own  de- 
velopment during  the  last  quarter  of  a  century. 
It  is  this  very  mixture  of  medievalism,  military 
and  civil,  with  progress  which  has  brought  the 
present  catastrophe  upon  Germany. 

But  the  bulk  of  the  Germans  only  see  that  in 
his  person  the  Kaiser  reflects  their  own  efficiency 
and  many  of  their  own  ideals.  Whereas  they 
would  have  been  startled  in  1888  at  the  pros- 
pect of  a  ruler  of  the  type  into  which  their  Em- 
peror has  developed,  they  find  him  now  just  the 
right  representative  for  the  nation  and  its  world- 


THE   KAISER  AND  THE   WAR     115 

power  aspirations.     They  are,   moreover,   flat- 
tered by  the  interest  or  admiration  he  excites 
abroad,  and  the  attention   he  attracts  every- 
where.    When  they  hear  that  as  a  side  issue  to 
the  business  of  managing  the  empire  he  is  a  very 
successful  business  man  in  private  enterprises, 
and  learn  that  he  has  extraordinary,  if  undevel- 
oped, mechanical  talent,  they  take  that  much 
additional  pride  in  him.     They  know  him,  more- 
over, to  be  a  man  of  unusual  charm,  when  he 
unbends,   and   of   great   personal   power,   with 
keen  wits,  a  real  sense  of  humor,  and  incessant 
mental  activity.     They  rejoice  in  his  executive 
ability,  and  his  rare  capacity  for  consecutive 
labor;  no  loafer  or  idler  is  he,  but  a  man  who 
despatches  easily  and  promptly  masses  of  work. 
When  he  is  seen  in  public  he  makes  a  most 
pleasing  impression  upon  his  own  subjects  and 
upon  the  foreigners  he  meets  (as  is  clearly  evi- 
denced by  the  way  most  of  our  exchange  pro- 
fessors have  succumbed  to  his  charms),  for  he 
is  by  no  means  overbearing,  and  he  readily  in- 
terests himself  in  the  doings  of  the  varied  types 
of  men  who  come  into  contact  with  him,  and 
adopts  the  manner  and  speech  the  occasion  re- 


116  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

quires.  Indeed,  the  bombastic  speeches  which 
he  addresses  to  his  soldiers  and  sailors  are  just 
what  such  an  audience  wishes  to  hear.  In 
brief,  the  whole  country  likes  to  be  bossed  by 
so  interesting  and  brilliant  a  personality,  just  as 
Americans  for  similar  reasons  tolerated  doings 
and  sayings  in  Mr.  Roosevelt  while  in  office  that 
would  have  ruined  any  President  who  was  less 
entertaining,  less  energetic,  less  vital. 

Outside  of  the  Socialists  and  the  Radicals, 
few  seem  to  be  able  to  resist  the  Kaiser's  vigor 
and  charm,  or  to  stop  to  analyze  and  inquire 
whither  his  political  philosophy  and  his  auto- 
cratic theory  of  governing  are  leading  the  coun- 
try. No  one  else,  of  course,  paints  him  as  such 
an  unspeakable  wretch  as  have  the  British  news- 
papers, which  are  repeating,  after  a  century, 
their  falsifications  about  the  first  Napoleon; 
or  believes  such  abominable  libels  about  the 
Kaiser's  sons  as  that  they  have  robbed,  after 
the  manner  of  common  thieves,  the  castles  in 
which  they  have  sojourned  in  France.  But 
there  were  Germans  in  plenty  prior  to  the  out- 
break of  this  war  who  did  dissent  from  the 
Kaiser's  policies,  like  the  hundreds  of  thousands 


THE   KAISER  AND  THE   WAR    117 

of  Germans  who  vote  the  Social-Democratic 
ticket  because  there  is  no  other  effective  medium 
of  protest.  They  vote  thereby  against  the  Jun- 
ker, against  militarism,  against  the  protective 
tariff,  and  the  obstacles  which,  put  in  the  way 
of  the  free  importation  of  food,  increase  the  cost 
of  living  for  the  struggling  masses  and  enrich  the 
prosperous  Agrarians;  but  they  do  not  thereby 
necessarily  favor  the  theories  of  Marx.  They 
seek  for  better  conditions  of  life;  to  them  rightly 
their  country  is  not  the  ideal  nation  so  many 
have  painted  it,  and  they  do  not  like  the  type 
of  autocrat  the  Kaiser  represents.  They  do  not 
forget  or  overlook  the  numerous  trials  for  lese- 
majeste;  they  believe  in  the  right  of  a  nation 
to  choose  its  own  rulers,  and  they  deplore  the 
absence  of  a  responsible  ministry.  To  such  as 
these  the  Kaiser,  with  all  his  attractiveness, 
makes  little  appeal;  they  even  regard  him  only 
as  the  chief  ally  of  those  who  are  intrenched  in 
privilege  and  in  caste;  who  would  run  the  gov- 
ernment to  suit  their  own  selfish  interests,  who 
are  happy  in  the  consciousness  that  them  the 
Kaiser  will  not  offend. 

Indeed,   as   an   ardent   reformer   the   Kaiser 


118  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

shines  not  at  all.  The  remarkable  social  and 
pension  legislation  which  has  been  enacted  since 
Bismarck  planned  it  in  order  to  offset  the  spread 
of  socialism,  has  come  to  pass,  not  in  spite  of 
the  Kaiser,  but  without  his  taking  any  particu- 
lar interest  in  it.  Never  has  he  expressed  any 
genuine  sympathy  for  the  common  people;  they 
were  created  for  him  to  govern  in  his  wisdom, 
and  this  he  is  ready  to  do  if  they  will  be  good 
and  not  vote  for  Social-Democrats.  Mr.  Price 
Collier  wrote  of  the  Kaiser's  "complacent  neglect 
of  how  the  work  of  the  world  is  done  by  patient 
labor;  of  how  the  works  of  art  are  only  born  of 
travail  and  tears."  He  has  had  no  grand  vizier 
to  take  him  on  night  strolls  and  show  him  how 
the  masses  of  his  people  live,  and  how  many  of 
them  often  starve.  The  "acrid  smell  of  the 
homes  of  the  poor"  has  never  offended  his  nos- 
trils. They  are  but  pawns  to  man  his  ships 
and  fill  his  regiments,  while  he  dwells  on  high 
to  play  with  masterly  skill  the  role  of  the  ruler 
who  owes  obedience  to  no  one,  neither  to 
Reichstag  nor  to  people.  It  is  picturesque,  it  is 
grand,  it  is  done  with  artistic  attention  to  de- 
tails, it  gives  to  the  nation  a  wonderfully  paint- 


THE   KAISER  AND  THE  WAR     119 

able  head;  but  it  leads  nowhere,  for  it  is  directly 
contrary  to  that  democratic  current  of  the  ages 
which  flows  on  over  kings  of  blood  and  kings  of 
privilege  alike,  and  is  certain  to  relegate  them 
all  eventually  to  the  limbo  of  the  outworn. 

When  the  war  broke  out,  to  many,  in  the 
first  flush  of  a  passionate  sense  of  the  injustice 
done  to  Germany  herself  by  permitting  her  to 
take  to  wholesale  murdering,  it  seemed  as  if 
this  terrible  crime  against  humanity  must  end 
one  dynasty  after  another.  Yet  for  the  mo- 
ment, as  has  been  pointed  out  elsewhere,  the 
Kaiser  stands  higher  in  the  esteem  and  affec- 
tion of  his  subjects  than  ever.  They  are  united 
and  determined;  they  have  buried  all  griev- 
ances and  dislikes  and  healed  all  differences  for 
the  hour.  They  turn  to  the  Kaiser  in  the  firm 
belief  that  his  commanding  abilities  will  find 
the  way  out;  they  are  as  content  to  die  for  him 
personally  as  for  the  state  he  dominates.  Did 
not  the  crews  of  the  lost  German  ships  go  down 
to  death  cheering  for  his  Majesty  with  the  same 
enthusiasm  as  for  the  empire  ?  Are  not  the  two 
million  volunteers  quite  ready  to  take  him  at 
his  word  that  their  lives  belong  to  him  to  throw 


120  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

away  as  he  sees  fit?  Doubtless  were  he  not 
so  deeply  concerned  with  the  outcome  of  it  all, 
did  not  heavier  cares  weigh  upon  him  to-day 
than  upon  any  other  human  being,  he  might 
rejoice  that,  for  the  moment,  in  authority  and 
in  the  good  will  of  the  people  he  stands  at  the 
highest  possible  pinnacle.  Socialists,  Radicals, 
Liberals,  Clericals,  all  who  have  cavilled  in  the 
past  are  for  the  nonce  silenced;  the  Reichstag 
exists,  as  he  would  have  it,  merely  to  record  his 
decrees.  For  the  hour  he  is  supreme.  Whether 
it  is  or  is  not  true  that  he  was  forced  to  the  war 
by  an  ultimatum  from  his  General  Staff,  and 
was  then  overcome  by  emotion  and  a  realiza- 
tion of  the  frightful  significance  of  the  step  he 
had  taken,  when  one  simple  sentence  from  him 
would  have  preserved  the  peace  of  Europe,  he 
holds  in  his  hands  to-day  the  immediate  fate 
of  his  empire.  There  is  no  time  now  for  duality 
of  personality  for  him,  or  for  his  subjects; 
theirs  can  only  be  the  role  of  fighting  men. 

But  when  it  is  all  over,  what  then  ?  If  it  is 
to  be  victory,  or  a  deadlock  because  of  mutual 
exhaustion  and  inability  of  one  side  to  conquer 
the  other,  the  Kaiser's  star  will  stand  high  in 


THE  KAISER  AND  THE   WAR     121 

the  constellations.  Not  that  there  will  be  no 
murmurs  of  discontent;  the  democratic  tend- 
encies of  the  age  will  still  have  to  be  reckoned 
with,  for  they  cannot  be  stilled  for  long. 
There  are  numerous  Germans  who  insist  to-day 
that  their  country  can  never  again  take  a  less 
exalted  attitude  toward  its  problems  than  that 
which  it  has  assumed  toward  the  crisis  that  now 
confronts  it.  What  they  call  the  ennobling  of 
the  nation  by  its  readiness  to  sacrifice  all,  will, 
they  declare,  never  be  wholly  lost;  it  will  be 
impossible,  they  aver,  for  Germans  ever  to 
think  parochially  again.  The  Kaiser,  too,  was 
absolutely  sincere  when,  in  the  spell  of  that 
momentous  hour,  he  shook  hands  with  the 
Social-Democratic  leaders  and  said  that  party 
considerations  wrould  never  again  weigh  with 
him.  But  he  and  they  have  spoken  in  an  hour 
of  spiritual  intoxication.  When  they  awake  it 
will  be  to  a  realization  that  with  the  advent  of 
a  successful  or  an  unsuccessful  peace  will  come 
a  rebirth  of  the  old  schisms  and  issues;  that  the 
Social-Democrats  will  appear  as  black  as  ever 
to  the  lords  of  privilege,  and  vice  versa.  If 
Germany  escapes  a  period  of  gross  corruption, 


122  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

of  rank  materialism,  of  lowered  vitality,  of  gen- 
uine decadence,  such  as  followed  hard  upon  the 
heels  of  our  idealistic  war  for  the  preservation 
of  the  American  Union,  she  cannot  avoid  a 
coarsening  of  the  nation's  entire  fibre,  for  that 
is  inevitable  when  a  country  goes  through  such 
physical  horrors  and  suffering.  When  the  sa- 
credness  of  human  life,  upon  which  foundation 
every  state  is  founded  in  time  of  peace,  is  so 
utterly  disregarded,  so  basely  violated,  there 
can  be  no  return  to  the  older  ideal  save  at  a 
high  price. 

Beyond  question,  if  the  Kaiser  triumphs  it 
means  a  setback  to  every  liberal  democratic 
movement.  War  inevitably  retards  reforms 
wherever  it  is  fought;  the  economic  waste 
presses  so  heavily  that  a  nation's  shaken  ener- 
gies are  usually  absorbed  for  years  in  making 
good  the  losses.  Then  we  may  count  upon 
declarations  by  autocracy  and  aristocracy  that 
their  militaristic  policies  triumphed,  that  the 
mailed  fist  on  sea  and  land  alone  saved  the 
country  from  completes t  disaster.  Again,  there 
is  nothing  in  the  Kaiser's  record  to  lead  any  one 
to  hope  that  if  he  wins  he  will  seek  to  reward 


THE  KAISER  AND  THE  WAR     123 

the  nation  for  its  courage,  steadfastness,  and 
sacrifices  by  turning  toward  liberalism.  But  if 
he  loses  there  will  be  a  different  story;  only  the 
defeat  of  the  empire  will  afford  hope  that  there 
will  be  rapid  progress  toward  democratization, 
toward  a  responsible  ministry,  toward  equality  at 
the  ballot-box  in  Prussia,  toward  elective  rulers, 
toward  the  overthrow  of  the  false  gods  of  mili- 
tarism and  imperialism.  Disaster  will  mean 
the  real  test  of  the  Kaiser's  greatness  as  it  meant 
a  supreme  test  of  the  spiritual  qualities  of  both 
the  Napoleons,  to  which  neither  of  them  reacted. 
For  human  nature  is  so  constituted  that  the 
public  will  begin  to  question  and  to  find  fault 
with  its  ruler  if  matters  should  go  wrong.  Then 
we  should  definitely  learn  if  there  are  really 
great  moral  qualities  and  true  spiritual  leader- 
ship in  the  Kaiser;  whether  there  is  hidden  in 
him  any  of  that  unshakable  faith  in  the  com- 
mon people  which  exalted  Lincoln  in  the  hour  of 
darkness.  Surely  without  Lincoln's  sympathy 
for  and  understanding  of  the  masses  he  could 
never  have  led  them  through  years  of  defeat 
and  discouragement  to  final  triumph.  Can  a 
ruler   who  is   as  far  removed   from   the  great 


124  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

majority  of  his  subjects  as  the  Kaiser  do  as 
well?  Time  will  perhaps  tell.  Will  he  shrink 
in  defeat  like  the  American  who  has  most  re- 
sembled him?  Whether  he  does  or  does  not, 
we  shall  be  witnessing  in  the  next  few  years, 
because  of  the  war,  still  another  phase  of  the 
fascinating  mental  and  spiritual  development 
of  this  extraordinary  man,  who  in  his  own  per- 
son has  done  more  than  any  other  ruler  to  re- 
vive the  fading  glories  of  royalty.  When  one 
looks  at  the  other  kings,  him  at  Petrograd,  at 
London,  at  Belgrade,  at  Vienna,  and  rates  their 
mental  calibre,  ponders  on  what  they  stand  for, 
and  sums  up  the  good  and  the  evil  of  their 
reigns,  one  cannot  but  feel  that  this  Kaiser 
shines  by  contrast,  for  all  his  faults,  for  all  his 
imperfect  development  which  the  war  may  do 
much  to  round  out. 

He  bulks  still  larger  if  we  but  regard  the  size 
of  the  men  with  whom  he  is  surrounded.  Com- 
pare Von  Bethmann-Hollweg  and  Bismarck  one 
cannot;  the  1914  Von  Moltke  appears  to  re- 
semble the  1870  Von  Moltke  only  in  name. 
The  more  one  considers  the  court  at  Berlin, 
the  greater  does  the  Kaiser's  stature  appear. 


THE   KAISER  AND  THE   WAR     125 

If  his  grandfather's  simple,  far  from  brilliant 
mentality  drew  men  of  great  power  to  his  side 
to  be  the  real  governors  of  Germany  and  the 
true  arbiters  of  her  fate,  his  grandson's  dominant 
personality  has  attracted  to  him,  particularly  of 
late,  no  men  of  powers  to  match  his  own.  He 
remains,  when  all  is  said  and  done,  a  vigorous, 
keen,  stimulating,  vital  person,  vibrating  with 
power,  at  this  hour  confronted  with  a  problem 
the  solution  of  which  is  big  with  his  own  fate, 
that  of  his  throne,  and  of  his  subjects. 


VI 

IMPERIALISM  AND  THE  GERMAN 

PARTIES 

NATURALLY  there  are  deeper  causes 
than  the  Kaiser's  ability  and  popu- 
larity, or  the  nation's  amazing  pros- 
perity, to  account  for  Germany's  readiness  to 
live  on  under  a  government  which  is  neither 
truly  representative  nor  democratic.  If  David 
Starr  Jordan  goes  to  extremes  when  he  says 
that  her  political  ideals  "hark  back  to  the  six- 
teenth century"  and  that  "a  great  nation  which 
its  own  people  do  not  control  is  a  nation  without 
a  government,"  it  is  nonetheless  true  that  the 
German  tendency  to-day  is  away  from  govern- 
ment by  numbers,  and  that  one  looks  in  vain 
between  the  Conservatives  and  Socialists  for  a 
really  effective  radical  group  with  liberal  ideals. 
The  failure  of  the  National  Liberals  to  stand  as 
a  great  reform  party  has  been  chiefly  respon- 
sible for  the  accession  to  the  Social-Democratic 

126 


IMPERIALISM  AND   PARTIES     127 

ranks  of  those  who  vote  its  ticket  wilhout  being 
converts  to  its  doctrines.  There  was  a  time 
some  years  ago  when  it  appeared  as  if  men  like 
Ludwig  Bamberger,  Eugen  Richter,  Ileinrich 
Rickert,  Georg  von  Siemens,  and  Theodor 
Barth  were  to  be  the  leaders  of  a  truly  Liberal 
party.  They  were  statesmen  who  talked  a  lan- 
guage which  liberal  Americans,  seeking  to  free 
their  countrymen  from  the  shackles  of  privilege, 
could  understand  as  well  as  the  English  disciples 
of  the  Manchester  school.  Indeed,  their  polit- 
ical ideals  were  largely  those  of  Cobden,  Bright, 
and  Gladstone. 

It  could  never  have  been  said  of  Germany, 
had  they  become  powerful  factors  in  its  parlia- 
mentary life,  as  it  is  being  alleged  to-day,  that 
there  exists  an  "irreconcilable  antagonism  of 
the  two  conceptions  of  life"  —  the  German  and 
the  American.  Herr  Harden  would  have  been 
far  less  likely  to  write  of  the  inability  of  the  two 
nations  to  think  alike.  This  radical  group  was 
also  profoundly  influenced  by  American  ideals 
with  which  Barth  found  himself  in  deepest 
sympathy  because  of  a  knowledge  and  appre- 
ciation   of    American    institutions    second    only 


128  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

to  that  of  James  Bryce.  These  radicals  stood 
in  varying  degrees  for  friendly  international 
relations  and  labored  for  peace;  they  opposed 
Agrarian  aggressions  as  they  did  the  severe 
Bismarckian  laws  against  the  Socialists.  They 
were  earnest  free-traders,  opposing  all  protect- 
ive tariffs,  as  they  did  all  duties  on  foodstuffs. 
While  believing  in  fair  and  liberal  treatment 
for  the  Social-Democrats,  they  vigorously  op- 
posed their  views,  just  as  Barth  led  in  denoun- 
cing the  efforts  to  conquer  the  unconquerable 
Danes  and  Poles  whom  fate  has  placed  under 
the  Prussian  eagle.  There  was  nothing  imperial- 
istic about  them  and  it  is  difficult  to  think  that 
if  they  had  lived  until  the  present  crisis  they 
would  not  have  been  desperately  unhappy  over 
Germany's  plight  to-day  and  her  drift  away 
from  the  pacific,  democratic  ideals  for  which 
they  contended.  For  example,  as  Von  Biilow 
admits,  Eugen  Richter  very  nearly  defeated 
the  army  legislation  asked  by  Count  von 
Caprivi,  whose  demand  for  seventy  batteries 
and  18,000  men  seems  modest  indeed  in  the 
light  of  subsequent  developments.  Altogether 
they  were  a  group  so  able  as  to  exercise  an  in- 


IMPERIALISM  AND   PARTIES     129 

fluence  far  out  of  proportion  to  their  numbers; 
yet  their  followers  have  been  ground  between 
the  misnamed  National  Liberals  and  the  Con- 
servatives on  the  one  hand,  and  the  Social- 
Democrats  on  the  other.  In  Bismarck's  time 
all  his  great  power  was  thrown  against  the 
Radicals,  often  to  their  personal  financial  loss. 
Individually  he  counted  them  among  his  most 
dangerous  opponents.  As  for  the  National 
Liberals,  they  years  ago  threw  away  their  chance 
to  become  a  really  strong  reform  party.  In 
many  respects  they  are  but  a  shade  less  con- 
servative than  the  Conservatives.  Independent 
radical  spirits  they  attract  not  at  all.  In  1912 
at  the  Reichstag  elections  the  Liberals  and 
Radicals  cast  3,227,846  votes  as  against  7,401,- 
825  cast  for  all  the  other  parties.  If  they  could 
but  pull  together  and  unite  on  a  truly  liberal 
and  progressive  platform,  they  could  obviously 
exercise  an  enormous  influence  on  German  po- 
litical life. 

As  the  years  went  by,  the  enlightened  radi- 
cal leaders  disappeared  one  by  one,  and  the 
development  of  the  paradoxical  modern  Ger- 
many continued.     Thanks  to  militarism  on  the 


130  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

one  hand,  with  its  constant  teaching  of  com- 
plete submission  to  the  authority  of  the  state, 
and  to  the  mistaken  Social-Democratic  policies 
and  teachings  on  the  other,  the  Agrarian, 
Clerical,  and  capitalistic  forces  before  whom 
the  government  bends  the  knee  have  had 
things  their  own  way.  The  Socialists  have 
really  aided  the  Kaiser  from  one  point  of  view, 
for  their  theory  that  the  state  should  do  and  be 
all  has  helped  him  to  strengthen  and  increase 
his  tremendously  centralized  and  militaristic 
authority  over  his  people.  Dr.  Michael  Sadler, 
the  vice-chancellor  of  the  University  of  Leeds, 
is  one  of  the  comparatively  few  foreign  observers 
to  perceive  that  for  Germany  this  has  meant  a 
deadening  of  independent  moral  judgments  and 
shrewd  political  observation  by  "an  excessive 
use  of  state  authority  and  by  too  persistent  an 
appeal  to  national  self-interest."  Intense  cen- 
tralization of  power  has  defeated  the  advocates 
of  a  decentralized  authority.  "Militarism  gave 
Germany  discipline.  Industrialism,  helped  by 
discipline,  gave  her  wealth.  The  doctrine  of 
the  state  secured  general  obedience  and  a  cer- 
tain form  of  self-sacrifice.     And  by  this  combina- 


IMPERIALISM  AND  PARTIES     131 

tion  of  good  and  evil  modern   Germany  grew 
very  rich  and  very  strong." 

Prince  von  Biilow  has  said  of  his  great  prede- 
cessor, Bismarck,  that  ''his  rule  can  only  serve 
as  a  precedent  for  a  strong,  determined,  and 
even  ruthless  government."  But  Bismarck  was 
a  cynical  intriguer  as  well  as  a  man  of  blood  and 
iron.  If  there  was  anything  he  would  refrain 
from  doing  —  falsifying  documents,  purchasing 
politicians,  and  corrupting  the  press  —  it  would 
be  hard  to  name  it.  Being  without  principle 
or  scruple,  he  was  naturally  one  of  those  poli- 
ticians who  think  it  the  height  of  statesmanship 
to  steal  from  the  other  man's  theories  whenever 
one's  rival  seems  to  be  striking  a  popular  chord. 
With  his  nature,  his  firm  belief  in  the  neces- 
sity of  an  autocratic  state  intrusting  complete 
power  to  the  Kaiser  he  had  created,  a  liberal 
policy  such  as  that  of  Richter  was  out  of  the 
question.  He  turned  his  attention  to  the  So- 
cialists, to  beat  them  at  their  own  game,  and 
laid  the  foundations  for  that  monarchical  so- 
cialism which  has  often  won  praise  abroad  be- 
cause of  its  apparent  devotion  to  the  general 
welfare.     The  state  administration  of  railroads, 


132  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

telegraphs,  telephones,  and  of  many  mines  and 
forests,  its  speculation  in  lands,  its  care  of  the 
aged,  disabled,  and  unemployed,  the  former 
through  compulsion  of  the  employers,  were 
nearly  all  the  outgrowth  of  Bismarck's  deter- 
mination to  filch  the  clothes  of  his  opponents 
and  to  use  what  he  considered  was  available 
in  Socialism  to  fortify  the  state  against  the  com- 
plete demands  of  the  Socialists.  Friendly  en- 
couragement of  the  Kartels,  the  German  equiva- 
lent for  our  trusts,  was  but  a  natural  step  for  so 
materialistic  a  state  as  Bismarck  left. 

Yet,  as  so  often  happens,  these  particular  com- 
promises have  not  only  not  resulted  in  the  de- 
sired checking  of  the  Social-Democratic  party, 
but  have  actually  witnessed  its  growth  from 
124,700  votes  in  1871  to  4,250,329  in  1912.  In 
the  five  years  from  1907  to  1912  it  grew  at  the 
rate  of  200,000  a  year.  It  is  as  interesting  to 
guess  what  Bismarck  would  have  said  to  this 
as  it  is  impossible  to  refrain  from  the  thought 
that  the  government  may  find  a  certain  com- 
pensation for  the  existing  war  in  its  diversion 
of  public  thought  from  internal  to  external 
affairs.     Certainly,   with    the    terrible    human 


IMPERIALISM   AND   PARTIES     133 

losses  now  going  on,  and  the  war-time  rallying 
to  the  support  of  the  Kaiser,  it  is  perfectly  safe 
to  say  that  there  will  not  be  200,000  Socialist 
accessions  in  1915.  Prince  von  Billow,  who  is 
a  much  more  authoritative  and  skilful  exponent 
of  the  modern  imperialistic  Germany  than  the 
Bernhardis  and  Treitschkes,  will  surely  be  of 
this  view,  for  he  has  laid  down  the  rule  that  a 
vigorous  national  policy  is  the  very  best  defense 
against  the  Social-Democratic  movement  —  "a 
policy  which  brings  the  best  powers  of  the  na- 
tion into  play;  which  supports  and  strengthens 
the  middle  classes,  already  numerous  and  ever 
increasing  in  number,  the  vast  majority  of 
whom  steadily  uphold  the  monarchy  and  the 
state.  .  .  .  The  idea  of  the  nation  as  such 
must  again  and  again  be  emphasized  by  dealing 
with  national  problems,  so  that  this  idea  may 
continue  to  move,  to  unite  and  to  separate 
parties.  .  .  .  The  danger  must  be  faced  and 
met  with  a  great  and  comprehensive  national 
policy.  .  .  ."  What  could  please  him  better 
than  a  foreign  conflict  if  it  can  but  be  success- 
fully carried  on  ? 

Thus  the  Social-Democrats,  the  only  great, 


134  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

vital,  radical  force  in  German  politics,  are  likely 
to  suffer  doubly  from  the  war:  first,  through 
the  temporary  ending  of  all  agitation  and  the 
changed  public  attitude  toward  domestic  af- 
fairs; and  secondly,  because  of  their  own  in- 
consistent policy  toward  the  war.  It  is  true 
that  when  the  party  in  its  annual  conclaves 
has  voted  on  the  question  of  a  general  strike 
in  case  of  war,  the  proposal  has  been  rejected. 
Nevertheless,  it  was  felt  that,  if  the  menace 
of  war  came,  they  would  exert  a  tremendous 
pacific  influence  at  home  and  abroad.  This 
conflict  came  too  suddenly  for  that,  but  it  was 
still  believed  that  Socialists  on  both  sides  would 
refuse  to  take  part  in  the  fighting,  or  at  least 
record  their  abhorrence  by  voting  against  it. 
But  the  deadly  poison  of  compromise  had  en- 
tered the  veins  of  the  German  brothers  of  the 
Socialist  faith  when  they  voted  to  increase  and 
support  the  army,  precisely  as  the  same  spirit 
of  compromise  with  those  who  believe  in  a 
large  army  and  navy  has  palsied  the  effective- 
ness of  our  American  peace  societies.  Had 
even  a  few  of  the  German  followers  of  Marx 
possessed  sufficient  courage  and  conviction  to 


IMPERIALISM  AND   PARTIES     135 

go  to  jail  for  their  pacific  beliefs,  or  to  face  a 
firing  squad,  if  need  be,  their  cause  would  have 
been  advanced  the  world  over.  Now  it  is  suf- 
fering proportionately  everywhere;  in  all  coun- 
tries the  Socialists  are  being  tainted  with  in- 
sincerity, with  being  without  the  courage  of 
their  convictions.  In  Germany,  Liebknecht 
alone  has  dared  to  refuse  to  vote  for  a  war 
credit,  and  for  this  he  may  be  punished  ere 
these  words  appear  in  type;  for,  as  Von  Biilow 
has  declared,  the  Social-Democrats  are  as  thor- 
oughly disciplined  as  any  other  body  in  the 
Kaiser's  empire  —  to  which  fact  he  attributes 
their  formidableness.  It  is  obvious,  surely, 
that  the  Social-Democrats  will  have  gained 
nothing  and  have  lost  much  by  the  war,  which 
they  can  hardly  criticise  successfully  after  hav- 
ing voted  to  support  it  and  after  having  taken 
part  in  it.  It  must  be  a  wide-spread  cause  of 
regret  that  what  seemed  like  one  of  the  most 
hopeful  forces  for  peace  is  now  bound  and  de- 
livered. 

The  trouble  was  that  there  was  nobody 
among  the  German  Socialists  to  speak  out 
like  Romain  Rolland  in  France  and  to  point 


136  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

out  to  them  the  error  of  their  present  position: 
that  by  holding  aloof  from  their  country's  bat- 
tles they  will  merely  bring  upon  themselves 
the  whip  of  the  Russian  autocracy  and  that 
social  organization  of  England  which,  in  foreign 
eyes,  grinds  down  her  poor.  With  rare  elo- 
quence Rolland  wrote: 

"You  Socialists  on  both  sides  claim  to  be  de- 
fending liberty  against  tyranny  —  French  lib- 
erty against  the  Kaiser,  German  liberty  against 
the  Czar.  Would  you  defend  one  despotism 
against  another?  Unite  and  make  war  on  both. 
There  was  no  reason  for  war  between  the  West- 
ern nations;  French,  English,  and  German,  we 
are  all  brothers  and  do  not  hate  one  another. 
The  war-preaching  press  is  envenomed  by  a 
minority,  a  minority  vitally  interested  in  main- 
taining these  hatreds,  but  our  peoples,  I  know, 
ask  for  peace  and  liberty  and  that  alone.  .  .  . 
Who  has  brought  these  plagues  upon  them, 
brought  them  to  the  desperate  alternative  of 
overwhelming  their  adversary  or  dying  ?  None 
other  than  their  governments,  on  whom,  in  my 
opinion,  the  guilt  rests;  the  three  rapacious 
eagles,  the  three  empires,  the  tortuous  policy 


IMPERIALISM  AND  PARTIES     137 

of  the  house  of  Austria,  the  ravenous  greed  of 
Russia,  the  brutality  of  Prussia.  The  worst 
enemy  of  each  nation  is  not  without  but  within 
its  frontiers,  and  none  has  the  courage  to  fight 
against  it." 

Had  German  Socialism  but  spoken  with  as 
clear  a  note,  how  vastly  strengthened  would  be 
its  position  to-day ! 

If  this  blunder  cannot  now  be  undone,  it  is 
interesting  to  note  that  Dr.  Albert  Siidekum, 
the  Social-Democratic  leader  and  the  member  of 
the  Reichstag  who  is  perhaps  best  informed  as 
to  conditions  in  the  United  States,  in  a  recent 
lecture  in  Berlin  on  "The  War  and  the  Ger- 
man Laboring  Man,"  served  notice  on  the 
prominent  government  officials  in  his  audience 
that  his  party  would  ask,  when  peace  is  re- 
stored, a  good  many  rewards  for  their  patriotism 
as  attested  by  their  military  services  and  sac- 
rifices. He  called  for  such  a  "mobilization" 
after  the  war,  in  matters  of  law  and  education, 
together  with  a  reform  of  the  Constitution,  as 
will  give  the  masses  a  far  larger  share  in  their 
government  and  their  administration. 

Should  this  come  about,  it  ought  to  be  at  the 


138  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

expense  of  the  Clericals  and  Conservatives  (the 
upper  millstone  for  the  Radicals),  whose  po- 
sition will  surely  be  strengthened  if  the  Kaiser 
wins.  It  is  true  that  when  it  comes  to  questions 
of  national  defense  there  are  no  Catholics  and 
no  Protestants.  Religious  prejudices  as  affect- 
ing these  two  churches  are  not  tolerated  in  the 
army,  however  powerful  racial  dislikes  may  be. 
There  are  no  Protestant  or  Catholic  regiments 
as  such.  But  in  the  country  as  a  whole  the 
influence  of  Rome  presses  severely  in  more 
quarters  than  one,  and  the  Clerical  party  is  a 
religious  party,  however  it  may  deny  the  fact. 
Bavaria,  a  Clerical  kingdom,  lags  in  some  re- 
spects well  behind  the  other  German  states. 
In  brief,  the  Centre  is  the  party  of  reaction  or 
of  standing  still.  In  the  nation  its  programme 
is  for  religious  teaching  in  the  schools,  for  a 
compulsory  religious  marriage,  for  protective 
tariffs,  and  for  the  strongly  centralized  state. 
It  has  for  years  formed  a  solid  block  of  approxi- 
mately one  hundred  votes  in  the  Reichstag, 
usually  cast  on  the  side  of  the  government,  but 
at  times  in  opposition,  in  order  to  obtain  party 
advantage  or  by  reason  of  a  political  bargain. 


IMPERIALISM  AND   PARTIES     139 

In  one  such  case,  in  190G,  when  the  Reichstag 
refused  to  vote  the  emergency  estimates  for 
the  army  then  fighting  in  Southwest  Africa,  the 
Centre  actually  struck  hands  for  the  moment 
with  their  sworn  enemies  the  Social-Democrats. 
Von  Biilow  dissolved  the  Reichstag  on  the 
ground  that  a  refusal  to  vote  the  men  and  sup- 
plies the  Kaiser  asked  was  an  intolerable  inva- 
sion of  his  constitutional  rights  as  supreme  war- 
lord. The  Centre  gained  three  votes  in  the 
ensuing  election,  the  Social-Democrats  meeting 
with  a  veritable,  but  totally  unexpected,  dis- 
aster. 

While  Von  Biilow  was  ever  ready  to  accept 
the  historic  support  of  the  throne  by  the  Cler- 
icals when  it  was  to  be  had,  he  now  feels  that 
there  are  "many  weighty  reasons  why  a  relig- 
ious party  should  not  wield  such  extraordinary 
and  decisive  influence  in  politics  as  was  the 
case  for  many  years  in  this  country.  The 
Centre  is  and  will  remain  a  party  held  together 
by  religious  views,  however  subtly  opinion  in 
Cologne  and  Berlin  may  argue  about  the  idea 
of  a  religious  party."  One  of  these  weighty 
reasons  is  probably  a  recognition  of  the  fact  that 


140  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

logically  a  church  like  the  Roman  Catholic  must 
be  more  concerned  with  international  polity  than 
national.  The  trend  of  the  church  is  in  the  op- 
posite direction  from  the  intense  national  idea 
toward  which  the  Germany  of  to-day  has  been 
steered.  Imperialistic  materialists  of  the  Von 
Bulow-Treitschke  type  cannot,  moreover,  view 
with  satisfaction  the  control  in  Rome,  a  foreign 
city,  of  a  great  German  church  which  numbers 
one-third  of  the  citizens  of  the  nation.  Then 
there  are  the  historic  encounters  between  the 
Centre  and  the  federal  government  in  Berlin 
which  show  pretty  clearly  that  there  is  always 
the  possibility  of  a  conflict  between  them,  that 
is,  between  the  wishes  of  the  papacy  at  Rome 
and  the  controlling  powers  in  Berlin. 

Hence  the  German  Imperialists  have  felt  that, 
however  much  the  Centre  might  lean  toward 
conservatism  and  the  support  of  the  throne,  it 
would  sooner  or  later  be  a  serious  stumbling- 
block  in  their  way.  Von  Biilow  was  the  more 
ready,  therefore,  in  1907  to  turn  to  Liberals  and 
Radicals  for  his  majority.  The  latter  fell 
readily  into  his  nationalistic  trap  and  were 
soon  compromising  themselves  from  the  stand- 


IMPERIALISM  AND  PARTIES     141 

point  of  consistency  and  principle  by  voting  for 
the  great  armaments,  quite  forgetting  how  bril- 
liantly Rickert  had  opposed  them  a  few  years 
before.  In  consequence  Von  Blilow  was  able  to 
point  triumphantly  to  the  spectacle  of  all  the 
middle-class  parties  lined  up  for  militarism  and 
for  that  world-imperialism  which,  as  now  ap- 
pears, was  the  logical  outcome  of  the  national- 
istic propaganda.  At  the  beginning  of  the  fate- 
ful year  1914  Von  Biilow  could  even  write  in 
his  own  justification:  "The  national  questions  of 
the  empire  have  ceased  to  be  a  subject  of  anx- 
iety in  home  politics."  But,  confidently  as  he 
and  others  may  hope  to  find  the  power  of  the 
church  of  Rome  in  Germany  weakened  by  the 
tremendous  outburst  of  national  feeling  due  to 
the  war,  it  is  by  no  means  certain  that  they 
will  find  their  hopes  realized.  The  Centre, 
which  could  gain  seats  in  the  bitter  campaign 
of  1906,  when  it  was  taunted  with  an  unpa- 
triotic failure  to  support  a  German  army  under 
fire  —  freely  portrayed  as  tantamount  to  trea- 
son —  is  the  party  least  likely  to  be  affected  by 
the  war,  however  desirable  might  be  a  decrease 
of  its  power.     It  appears  to  be  practically  mi- 


142  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

shakable  in  its  intrenched  position  by  any 
upheaval  whether  due  to  domestic  or  foreign 
causes  —  at  least  unless  its  South  German 
strongholds  are  affected  by  some  far-reaching 
wave  of  liberalism  and  reform.  If  the  reasons 
given  above  for  the  natural  aloofness  of  the 
Centre  from  the  nationalistic  policy  are  sound, 
future  chancellors  will  still  have  to  reckon  with 
its  lukewarmness,  as  did  Von  Billow. 

As  for  the  Conservatives  and  the  favored 
minority  of  privilege-holders  they  represent, 
what  more  natural  than  for  these  overlords  to 
turn  from  imperialistic  exploitation  and  domi- 
nation at  home  to  imperialistic  schemes  abroad  ? 
They,  too,  have  recognized  in  their  appeal 
to  national  pride,  ambition,  and  cupidity,  an 
excellent  means  of  combating  the  advocates 
of  social  revolution.  They  have  asserted  that 
colonies  were  necessary  to  protect  their  over- 
seas trade  and  to  provide  for  their  surplus  pop- 
ulation. But  emigration  dropped  from  220,902 
in  1881  to  the  insignificant  figure  of  19,883  in 
1908.  Those  who  maintain,  therefore,  that 
Germany  must  have  territory  to  which  to  over- 
flow can  justify  themselves  only  by  reference 


IMPERIALISM  AND  PARTIES     143 

to  a  distant  future.  If  the  German  steamship 
lines  had  had  to  depend  upon  German  emi- 
grants for  support,  they  must  long  since  have 
failed;  even  to  South  America  —  Brazil  and 
the  Argentine  —  about  which  our  American 
jingoes  have  shown  such  hypocritical  concern, 
lest  there  be  a  violation  of  the  Monroe  Doc- 
trine, the  German  emigration  is,  of  late,  abso- 
lutely nil.  There  has  been  too  great  prosperity 
at  home  and  too  rapid  industrial  expansion. 
Then,  the  German  is  not  a  successful  colonist; 
he  is  as  overbearing  and  unjust  in  governing  the 
natives  that  come  under  his  sway  as  our  South- 
erners are  in  their  treatment  of  the  negro  masses 
upon  whose  manual  labor  their  prosperity  is 
founded.  Ruthless  Prussian  methods  are  ap- 
plied abroad  as  if  they  were  the  only  standards 
of  government;  as  if  there  were  no  possibility 
that  forms  and  methods  of  administration  might 
have  to  be  changed  in  different  climates  with 
different  human  beings.  As  a  result  there  have 
been  bloody  rebellions  in  the  largest  colonies. 
It  is  a  kind  of  poetic  justice,  therefore,  which 
sends  native  troops  against  the  Germans.  The 
spirits  of  the  slaughtered  and  starved  Herreros 


144  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

may  perhaps  be  rejoicing  at  the  sight  in  about 
the  same  measure  as  the  Germans  are  horrified 
that  their  Kultur  is  being  assailed  by  what  they 
are  pleased  to  call  "mongrel  races." 

Still  another  fact  shows  the  falsity  of  the 
German  imperialist  contention  as  to  the  neces- 
sity of  colonies.  Each  year  several  hundred 
thousand  Italian,  Russian,  Polish,  and  Hunga- 
rian workmen  cross  into  Germany  to  harvest 
the  crops.  They  in  part,  therefore,  take  the 
place  of  the  860,000  Germans  who  are  drawn 
off  from  industrial  employments  because  of  the 
compulsory  military  service.  At  almost  all 
times  it  is  possible  to  see  in  South  Germany 
Italians  working  on  large  public  enterprises  pre- 
cisely as  they  are  doing  the  heavy  work  in  the 
eastern  States  of  America.  In  other  words,  the 
expansion  of  German  industry  which  is  so  ap- 
parent by  contrast  the  minute  one  crosses  the 
Alsacian  border,  when  bound  from  France  east- 
ward, has  far  outrun  the  natural  expansion  of 
the  population,  and  this  is  true  despite  the  over- 
crowding and  the  poverty  of  the  masses  in  the 
cities.  But,  if  it  were  not  true,  it  is  still  a  fact 
that  the  Germans  are  untempted  by  the  oppor- 


IMPERIALISM   AND   PARTIES     145 

trinities  in  their  colonies,  as  Doctor  Dernburg, 
the  best  colonial  minister  they  have  had,  well 
knows.  In  some  of  the  smaller  colonies  the 
total  German  population  is  practically  the 
official  one.  Never  was  there  so  clear  a  case 
of  acquisition  for  acquisition's  sake  as  this  of 
the  German  colonies.  Until  the  early  eighties 
Germany  lived  in  complete  happiness  without 
thought  of  one.  Then  the  idea  came  to  Bis- 
marck that  Germany  must  be  in  the  fashion, 
and  so  the  grabbing  of  other  people's  lands 
began,  in  slavish  imitation  of  France  and  Eng- 
land. As  one  who  was  in  Berlin  when  the  first 
"German  Africans"  arrived  there,  the  writer 
well  recalls  what  elaborate  official  efforts  were 
made  to  rouse  the  public  to  enthusiasm  over  this 
first  plunge  into  an  oversea  venture,  which  was 
part  of  Bismarck's  deliberate  propaganda  to 
arouse  national  pride  and  solidarity  among  the 
German  states  then  unified  but  a  dozen  years. 

As  for  the  argument  that  Germany  must  have 
colonies  as  coaling  stations  for  her  war-ships 
and  refuges  for  her  merchantmen  in  the  event 
of  hostilities,  the  war  has  shown  that  for  her 
the  only  safe  harbors  abroad  are  neutral  ones. 


146  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

Her  navy,  which,  it  was  insisted,  was  necessary 
to  protect  her  commerce,  has  failed  to  do  so, 
and  despite  the  daring  and  dash  of  the  Karls- 
ruhe, the  Emdcn,  and  a  few  others,  the  injury 
inflicted  by  her  commerce-destroyers  is  a  mere 
trifle  when  compared  with  the  British  loss  in 
exports  and  imports  in  the  first  five  months  of 
the  struggle  due  solely  to  the  dislocation  of 
trade  by  the  war.  This  commerce-protecting 
argument  has  done  good  service  in  Germany  for 
the  imperialists,  but  if  there  had  been  no  great 
merchant  fleet  to  warrant  it,  another  reason 
for  this  naval  expansion  would  have  been  found, 
precisely  as  our  American  imperialists  have 
found  other  excuses  for  our  unduly  large  "de- 
fensive" navy.  The  mischief  done  to  Germany 
by  the  upbuilding  of  its  fleet  will  one  day,  we 
trust,  be  set  forth  by  some  sound  German  his- 
torian, after  the  bitterness  of  the  present  con- 
flict has  passed  away.  He  will  show  how  its 
upbuilding  increased  the  size  of  the  French, 
British,  and  United  States  fleets;  how  it  gave 
chauvinists  everywhere  the  opportunity  to  rouse 
suspicion  and  passion  against  Germany,  and 
how  its  existence  helped  to  draw  Great  Britain 


IMPERIALISM  AND   PARTIES     147 

into  the  catastrophe  of  1914.  He  will  recall 
to  his  readers  the  fact  that  Germany's  coasts 
needed  no  fleet  to  protect  them  in  1870. 

Judging  by  the  masterly  inactivity  of  the 
French  and  Russian  fleets  thus  far,  those  coasts 
would  have  been  safe  enough  under  the  protec- 
tion of  their  guns  and  mines  had  France  and 
Russia  been  Germany's  only  enemies.  Up  to 
the  present  time  there  has  been  nothing  in  the 
progress  of  the  naval  war  to  prove  that  Ger- 
many has  gained  anything  of  real  moment  by 
her  fleet.  The  war  will  be  decided  on  land, 
and  thus  far  the  Kaiser's  navy  has  weakened 
its  opponents  scarcely  at  all;  it  has  simply  fed 
German  pride  by  proving  that  Germany's  offi- 
cers and  men  are  no  less  excellent  seamen,  and 
perhaps  even  more  daring,  than  England's;  that 
they  can  fight  and  die  with  supreme  courage  and 
complete  readiness  to  sacrifice  all,  even  when 
the  odds  are  overwhelming.  The  development 
of  the  German  fleet  has,  indeed,  had  a  tragic 
effect  upon  the  fortunes  of  the  nation,  if  only 
because  of  the  uneasiness  and  antagonism  it  has 
created  in  Great  Britain,  Germany's  natural 
ally. 


148  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

If  it  be  asserted  that  this  is  England's  fault, 
that  the  danger  to  her  swollen  navalism  was 
really  what  aroused  her  to  strike,  and  that  she 
has  no  natural  right  to  a  monopoly  of  sea-power, 
our  answer  is  that  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  Ger- 
many has  benefited  in  any  way  by  her  fleet  to 
offset  the  anxieties  it  created,  justly  or  unjustly, 
not  only  in  England,  but  in  France  and  the 
United  States.  The  writer  holds  no  brief  what- 
ever for  the  British  navy,  but  no  one  can  point 
to  any  injury  done  to  Germany's  sea  trade  since 
the  foundation  of  the  empire  by  reason  of  the 
preponderance  of  British  war-ships.  In  the  face 
of  it  the  German  merchant  fleet  has  grown  year 
by  year  with  amazing  celerity,  because  of  the 
enterprise  and  far-sightedness  of  her  merchants, 
the  skill  of  her  ship-builders,  the  character  and 
ability  of  her  seamen.  No  subsidies  have  been 
needed,  and  no  colonies  either,  for  this  wonderful 
expansion,  and  no  selfish  appeals  to  national 
cupidity  or  national  pride.  Her  battle  fleet 
has  helped  not  at  all,  for  her  conquest  of  the 
sea  has  in  fact  been  due  to  the  same  thrift, 
scientific  management,  and  industry  that  ac- 
count for  her  success  ashore.     The  war  fleet,  it 


IMPERIALISM  AND  PARTIES     149 

must  be  repeated,  has  burdened  Germany  be- 
cause of  the  fears  and  prejudices  it  caused; 
but  this  is,  of  course,  the  very  contrary  of  the 
teachings  of  the  nationalists  and  imperialists. 

Unfortunately  for  Germany,  as  has  been 
pointed  out,  her  diplomacy  has  often  marred  her 
efforts  to  essay  the  role  of  a  world-power.  Her 
diplomatic  corps  has  been  too  rigid  and  too  nar- 
row, too  exclusively  aristocratic,  too  little  rep- 
resentative of  the  best  in  the  nation,  and  too 
prone  to  adopt  the  bureaucratic  tone.  It  still 
appears  to  be  actuated  by  the  old  idea  that 
the  diplomat  is  the  personal  representative  and 
agent  of  the  monarch  and  of  nobody  else.  In- 
telligent Germans  frankly  envy  the  French  for- 
eign service,  in  which  a  man  of  talents  may 
rise  to  the  highest  posts  without  having  to  seek 
the  favor  of  an  exclusive,  autocratic  court. 
They  have  seen  much  good  in  our  American 
diplomatic  system,  or,  better,  lack  of  system. 
For  if  it  sometimes  leads  to  our  being  misrep- 
resented abroad  by  men  lacking  in  experience, 
knowledge,  good  manners,  and  refinement,  it 
at  least  brings  men  of  varying  types  to  the 
front  —  business  men,  journalists,  lawyers,  pol- 


150  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

iticians,  and  not  mere  bureaucrats  of  a  pecul- 
iarly narrow  tradition.     True,  these  professional 
diplomats   are   supposed   to  be   broadened   by 
residence  in  all  quarters  of  the  globe;   yet,  as  a 
writer  in  the  Deutsche  Rundschau  has  recently 
pointed  out,  the  German  bureaucracy,  although 
"the  most  reliable  and  best  in  the  world,  must 
fail  in  the  foreign  service,  because  the  training 
is  rigid,  inflexible,  and  precisely  the  same  as  for 
administrative  duties  at  home."     Others  may 
not  agree  with  him  that  German  diplomacy  has 
been  "too  correct"  and  too  much  controlled  by 
a  narrow  judicial  point  of  view.     But  his  asser- 
tion that  it  is  small-calibred  and  that  it  smacks 
too  much  of  the  petty  bureaucratic,  i.  e.,  is  too 
" assessorenhaft"  is   not  likely  to  be  gainsaid 
by  those  who  know.     As  a  result,  he  says,  the 
German   meets   everywhere   he   goes   with    "a 
failure  to  understand  him  or  a  dislike  tinged 
with  hatred."     This  writer  is  frank  to  say  that 
this  state  of  affairs  cannot  be  explained  away 
by  asserting  that  German  success  is  Germany's 
only  crime;    the  responsibility,  he  insists,  lies 
not  all  with  the  other  nations. 

The   truth   surely   is   that   Germany's   inner 


IMPERIALISM  AND  PARTIES     151 

social  and  political  development  has  not  kept 
pace  with  the  expansion  of  her  foreign  trade 
and  her  international  interests,  with  the  result, 
as  we  have  seen,  that  those  international  rela- 
tions have  been  bunglingly  handled  for  do- 
mestic political  purposes  or  for  a  world-policy 
injurious  to  the  nation.  This  cannot  be  empha- 
sized too  strongly,  and  when  to  it  be  added  that 
the  men  who  are  trusted  to  interpret  Germany's 
national  aspirations  abroad  are  not  representa- 
tive of  the  aspirations  of  the  bulk  of  the  people, 
or  even  of  her  commercial  interests,  the  reasons 
for  dissatisfaction  with  her  foreign  service  are 
plain.  The  press  repeatedly  sins  when  it  comes 
to  dealing  with  foreign  affairs;  at  least,  it  has 
a  rare  faculty  for  supporting  the  wrong  side. 
Thus,  in  the  Spanish-American  War,  in  uphold- 
ing Spain  it  made  absolutely  no  allowance  for 
the  altruistic  and  unselfish  motives  which  ac- 
tuated the  bulk  of  the  American  people;  it 
failed  to  distinguish  that,  however  badly  a  sec- 
tion of  our  press,  politicians,  and  public  might 
behave,  there  was  at  bottom  no  ulterior  purpose. 
Recollections  of  German  tactlessness  at  Ma- 
nila  and   elsewhere  rankle  in  this  country  to 


152  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

Germany's  detriment  to-day.  In  the  settle- 
ment of  the  Chinese  war  she  alienated  Japan 
and  angered  England,  with  the  resultant  Anglo- 
Japanese  alliance  now  so  fateful  to  her.  When 
England  made  advances,  Germany  rebuffed  her, 
because  at  that  particular  moment  she  cared 
more  for  her  friendship  with  Russia,  the  net 
result  being  that  Russia,  France,  and  England 
became  allies.  All  of  which  recalls  the  saying 
of  Friedrich  Wilhelm  IV  that  "the  army  has  in 
every  case  had  to  make  good  the  blunders  of 
our  diplomacy";  that  it  may  succeed  in  doing 
so  now  must  surely  be  the  fervent  wish  of  many 
thousands  of  Germans  to-day. 

Even  when,  as  in  Moroccan  affairs,  Germany 
was  tactically  correct,  her  diplomats  have  not 
known  how  to  utilize  their  situation  to  the  full- 
est advantage,  or  how  to  present  their  case  so 
as  to  make  the  best  possible  impression  on  the 
rest  of  the  world.  It  is  impossible  to-day  to 
foresee  any  better  relations  for  her  with  the 
other  members  of  the  family  of  nations  until 
responsible  parliamentary  government  is  estab- 
lished with  control  over  foreign  affairs  and  with 
the  powers  of  the  Kaiser  curtailed. 


IMPERIALISM   AND   PARTIES     153 

The  same  thing  is  true  of  the  Russian  au- 
tocracy to-day.  England,  for  instance,  is  very 
happy  to  have  Russia  help  her,  but  trust  her 
she  does  not.  It  all  comes  back  to  the  fact 
that  in  our  present  political  development  an 
unchecked  monarchy  is  a  far  greater  danger 
to  the  peace  of  the  world  than  is  a  democracy. 

How  soon  is  this  going  to  be  realized  by  the 
German  masses?  How  soon  will  they  see  that 
the  best  way  to  master  the  seas  and  supply  the 
needs  of  the  outside  world  is  the  pacific  way, 
the  way  of  free  and  friendly  trade  without  the 
threat  of  army  and  navy  ?  How  soon  will  they 
realize  the  harm  that  this  threat  has  worked  in 
the  past;  that  their  altogether  admirable  con- 
quest of  foreign  marts  has  been  used  as  a  blind 
by  those  who  would  cure  internal  ills  not  by 
genuine  reforms,  but  by  playing  one  party  off 
against  another  and  confusing  all  by  chauvin- 
istic appeals?  Upon  the  speed  with  which 
these  questions  are  answered  would  seem  to 
depend  the  progress  of  internal  reform  in  Ger- 
many, for  which  her  well-wishers  look  so  ea- 
gerly. 

By  its  very  nature  war  checks  reasoning;  yet 


154  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

the  hour  will  come  when  Germany's  political 
leaders,  her  men  and  women  of  conscience,  will 
sit  down  with  one  another  to  judge  the  past 
and  to  count  the  costs  of  the  war.  They  will 
find  their  country  bereaved  and  in  mourning  for 
an  incredible  number  of  needlessly  wasted  souls, 
with  scarcely  a  family  unseared  by  some  bitter, 
bitter  loss.  By  the  side  of  this  impoverish- 
ment, materialistic  things  pale,  but  how  great 
will  be  the  money  debt  to  face  them,  to  coun- 
teract and  offset  years  and  years  of  arduous, 
penurious  labor,  of  thrift,  of  self-denial !  The 
lives  of  all  who  survive  will  be  profoundly  af- 
fected and  altered.  Cherished  ambitions  will 
have  come  to  naught;  for  thousands  of  parents 
who  will  have  sacrificed  not  one  but  two  and 
three  sons  the  skies  will  be  clouded  forever. 
No  sunlight  will  again  penetrate  the  darkened 
chambers  of  their  hearts.  Men  and  women  by 
tens  of  thousands  will  have  passed  overnight 
from  riches  and  competence  to  poverty.  The 
misery  of  the  poor  will  handicap  them  more  than 
ever,  particularly  if,  in  addition  to  the  debt  of 
the  war,  they  must  again  take  up  the  burden 
of  supporting  860,000  men  in  unproductive  labor 


IMPERIALISM   AND   PARTIES     155 

to  prepare  for  another  such  massacre  of  inno- 
cents —  for  such  it  is.  All  this  at  the  bidding 
of  an  uncontrolled  imperialism  ! 

Will  not  the  masses,  if  they  but  reason  about 
it,  be  tempted  to  pray  that  their  enemies  may 
have  the  power  to  punish  them  by  sinking  their 
fleet,  by  levelling  their  forts,  by  forbidding 
them  to  arm  again  ?  Will  they  not,  failing  that, 
take  it  upon  themselves  to  arrange  their  affairs 
and  recast  their  institutions  that  the  like  of 
this  most  diabolical  of  catastrophes  shall  never 
occur  again?  Will  they  not  insist  upon  their 
reckoning  with  the  "national  idea,"  recogniz- 
ing it  as  an  autocratic  device  to  confuse  issues 
and  parties?  Will  there  not  be  raised  up  now 
a  Gambetta;  some  real  champion  of  the  people, 
unhampered  by  the  fallacies  of  Socialism,  to  lead 
with  a  constructive,  but  radical,  programme  ? 
For  him  Germany  has  long  been  waiting,  per- 
haps even  now  in  vain.  But  there  is  a  wonder- 
ful need  for  such  a  one  to  point  the  true  way 
to  national  greatness;  to  overcome  the  falla- 
cies of  professors  and  princes;  to  show  what  is 
the  true  spiritual  way  to  conquer  the  world,  to 
call  up  once  more  the  spirit  of  the  old,  beloved 


156  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

Germany,  self-contained,  lovable,  devoted  to 
liberal  thought  as  to  freedom  from  cant  and 
dogma,  a  menace  to  nobody,  revered  every- 
where for  her  sciences,  her  knowledge,  and  the 
wisdom  of  her  teachings. 

Perhaps  only  one  thing  is  certain:  the  polit- 
ical Germany  of  yesterday  has  gone  forever. 
It  is  beyond  recall,  whatever  the  check  or  the 
gain  to  the  things  of  the  spirit,  or  whither  the 
current  of  democracy  shall  flow  which  now  stirs 
so  sluggishly  the  political  deeps  of  what  is  the 
Kaiser's  empire,  but  must  some  day  be  his 
people's. 


VII 

THE  UNITED  STATES  AND  THE 
PEACE  TREATY 

AT  this  writing  many  Americans  are  chaf- 
A\  ing  at  President  Wilson's  policy  of  neu- 
trality. They  would  have  the  United 
States  officially  voice  its  protest  against  the 
violation  of  Belgium.  Was  it  not  a  signatory 
with  Germany  to  that  convention  of  the  Second 
Hague  Conference  which  forbade  belligerents 
to  move  troops  across  the  territory  of  a  neutral 
power?  Shall  the  United  States  remain  silent 
while  Germany  makes  of  these  solemn  Hague 
treaties  mere  scraps  of  paper?  Ought  this 
country  not  to  hasten  the  end  of  the  war  by 
letting  Germany  feel  the  full  weight  of  our 
government's  indignation  at  this  breach  of 
faith  ?  Some,  like  ex-President  Eliot,  urge  that 
we  participate  in  the  war  in  ordei*  that  blood- 
shed cease  at  an  early  date  and  that  the  victory 

157 


158  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

be  so  decisive  as  to  make  out  of  the  question  a 
Waterloo  a  few  years  hence. 

Against  this  President  Wilson  has  wisely  set 
himself  like  flint.  It  is  of  the  utmost  impor- 
tance to  all  the  combatants  that  the  greatest 
of  the  remaining  neutral  nations  should  keep  its 
poise  and  be  free  from  the  bias  inevitable  if  it 
should  take  sides  by  diplomatic  action  or  by 
active  participation  in  the  war.  Both  sides 
have  appealed  to  the  head  of  this  country  to 
judge  the  alleged  illegal  war-acts  of  their  ene- 
mies —  a  striking  proof  that  they  have  felt  the 
need  of  an  unprejudiced  international  tribunal 
before  which  to  plead.  Both  sides  have  thus 
admitted  the  dominating  moral  position  of  the 
United  States.  There  appears  to  be  general 
agreement  that  it  will  be  President  Wilson's 
task  to  initiate  the  peace  proceedings  when 
there  has  been  butchery  enough.  Returning 
travellers  report  that  President  Wilson's  repu- 
tation abroad  has  grown  immeasurably  since 
the  war  began.  British  newspapers  have  dwelt 
with  satisfaction  on  that  passage  in  his  annual 
message  to  Congress  in  which  he  so  eloquently 
says  that  "We  are  the  champions  of  peace  and 


THE  UNITED  STATES  AND  PEACE    159 

of  concord.  And  we  should  be  very  jealous  of 
this  distinction  which  we  have  sought  to  earn. 
Just  now  we  should  be  particularly  jealous  of 
it  because  it  is  our  dearest  present  hope  that 
this  character  and  reputation  may,  presently,  in 
God's  providence,  bring  us  an  opportunity  such 
as  has  seldom  been  vouchsafed  any  nation,  the 
opportunity  to  counsel  and  obtain  peace  in 
the  world  and  reconciliation  and  healing  settle- 
ment of  many  a  matter  that  has  cooled  and  in- 
terrupted the  friendship  of  nations."  If  there 
has  been  some  serious  irritation  by  reason  of 
Mr.  Wilson's  firm  and  just  protest  against  the 
British  policy  in  regard  to  neutral  vessels,  there 
is  every  prospect  that  the  friendly  tone  of  the 
American  communication  and  of  the  British  an- 
swer will  permit  a  speedy  and  satisfactory  set- 
tlement of  the  entire  matter  without  any  grave 
disturbance  of  the  amicable  relations  previously 
existing. 

Aside  from  this  incident,  there  is  satisfaction 
abroad  with  the  attitude  taken  by  our  govern- 
ment up  to  this  time  —  even  in  Germany ;  if 
there  are  some  English  newspapers  which  would 
have  us  pull  their  chestnuts  out  of  the  fire,  and 


160  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

some  German  which  would  have  us  legislate  to 
forbid  the  sale  of  arms  and  military  supplies  to 
England,  as  we  stopped  the  exports  to  Mexico, 
they  all  admit  that  there  is  no  criticism  to  be 
made  of  the  policy  of  the  President  or  his  of- 
ficial acts.  There  is  not  the  slightest  insinuation 
that  we  have  failed  in  any  respect  in  our  duty 
as  a  neutral  under  the  existing  laws;  Secretary 
Bryan's  statement  to  Senator  Stone  must  prove 
this  to  all  who  are  unbiassed.  This,  together 
with  the  prevailing  belief  that  there  is  in  the 
White  House  a  man  of  the  exceptional  stature 
needed  for  the  wonderful  opportunity  looming 
up  before  him,  makes  it  of  the  utmost  impor- 
tance that  Mr.  Wilson  should  not  abate  a  single 
jot  from  the  policy  of  neutrality  he  has  marked 
out  for  himself  and  the  country. 

We  are  in  all  the  better  position  to  serve  be- 
cause the  President  has  passed  no  judgment 
upon  the  allegations  of  German  atrocities  in 
Belgium,  and  has  so  wisely  declared  that  these 
are  matters  to  be  decided  not  in  hot  but  in  cold 
blood.  Among  our  public,  too,  there  is  a  grow- 
ing consciousness  that  few  of  these  stories  of 
atrocities  can  be  supported,  as   our  returning 


THE  UNITED  STATES  AND  PEACE    101 

American  war  correspondents  have  testified. 
The  counter-allegations  of  similar  brutalities 
by  French,  Russians,  Servians,  Germans,  and 
Austrians  against  each  other  ought  to  make 
Americans  realize  how  frightful  are  the  cruelty 
and  destruction  inseparable  from  war,  and  how 
greatly  a  curious  war-hysteria  has  distorted  the 
vision  and  the  statements  of  those  who  undergo 
the  terror  of  modern  carnage.  When  officers 
and  men  of  unquestioned  courage  are  actually 
being  driven  insane  on  both  sides  by  the  hor- 
rors they  witness,  it  is  not  surprising  that  we 
have  to  deal  with  the  wildest  allegations,  which, 
if  true,  would  prove  that  human  nature  breaks 
down  utterly  with  the  first  shots.  The  people 
of  the  United  States  will  unsparingly  blame 
those  who  are  wantonly  guilty  when  the  facts 
are  established;  meanwhile,  if  the  press  is  an 
index,  they  are  more  and  more  following  the 
President's  example  and  reserving  judgment. 

Great,  doubtless,  would  be  the  service  ren- 
dered to  the  Allies  if  the  United  States  should 
fling  itself  into  the  war.  Far  greater  is  the 
service  which  it  can  perform  if  it  holds  not 
only  our  historic  but  our  moral  position  intact. 


162         GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

''This,"  Mr.  Wilson  wrote,  "is  the  time  above 
all  others  when  we  should  wish  and  resolve  to 
keep  our  strength  by  self-possession."  For  us 
to  rush  either  into  the  war  or  into  extensive 
preparations  for  war  would  be  not  merely  to  tie 
the  President's  hands,  to  deprive  him  of  his 
position  of  vantage,  but  to  rob  the  nation  of  its 
vast  moral  prestige,  for  it  would  be  the  very 
reverse  of  keeping  our  strength  and  self-pos- 
session. And  the  goal  is  not  merely  the  extend- 
ing of  our  good  offices  and  the  offering  of  a  navy- 
yard  building  for  the  plenipotentiaries  to  occupy, 
as  Mr.  Roosevelt  was  able  to  do  for  Russia  and 
Japan.  It  is  no  distortion  of  the  President's 
just  quoted  words  to  see  in  them  a  desire  to  use 
our  great  influence  in  the  direction  of  such  a 
disposition  of  the  question  of  armaments  as  to 
make  impossible  a  recurrence  of  this  cataclysm 
with  its  horrible  sum  total  of  misery.  That 
this  country  has  suffered  so  gravely  because  of 
the  war  in  its  role  of  innocent  bystander,  and 
that  it  is,  as  the  President  says,  honestly  de- 
sirous of  itself  keeping  out  of  the  maelstrom  of 
militarism,  are  other  reasons  that  assure  it  a 
position   of   commanding  importance  provided 


THE  UNITED  STATES  AND  PEACE    163 

that  the  President  remains  a  friend  to  all  parties 
until  the  end.  For  him  to  attempt  to  achieve 
his  great  aim  with  Congress  voting  a  larger 
army  and  navy  and  many  new  battleships 
would  be  out  of  the  question.  "You  ask  us  to 
disarm,"  would  be  the  answer,  "when  you  are 
arming  as  never  before.  What  sinister  motive 
dictates  the  suggestion?"  Should  the  Presi- 
dent take  sides,  the  moral  leadership  would  fall 
to  some  one  else,  or,  in  the  absence  of  any  other 
powerful  neutral  executive,  would  be  lacking 
altogether. 

How  grave  this  would  be  is  apparent  if  one 
considers  that  all  hope  of  the  world's  return  to 
sanity  rests  upon  the  coming  peace  conference. 
What  shall  it  avail  humanity  if  a  hateful  Prus- 
sian militarism  be  smashed  only  to  leave  in  its 
place  a  more  hateful  and  dangerous  Russian 
militarism  and  an  even  more  dominating  British 
navalism?  Where  will  be  the  gain  if  the  Con- 
tinent remains  armed  precisely  as  before  save 
that  Germany's  wings  are  clipped  ?  What  hope 
of  lasting  peace  will  there  be  if  the  militarists 
are  to  continue  to  dominate  in  the  counsels  of 
state?     How  long  can  so  unnatural  an  alliance 


164  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

as  that  of  reactionary  Russia  and  liberal  Eng- 
land last  if  there  is  a  return  to  the  old  system 
of  checks  and  balances,  of  secret  and  open  al- 
liances, with  the  power  to  make  war  in  the 
hands  of  a  few  who  have  supreme  authority 
over  great  military  machines  ?  Everybody  now 
agrees  that  this  war  must  have  come,  sooner  or 
later,  because  the  militarism  of  Europe  made  it 
inevitable.  How  soon  will  another  come  if  it  is 
left  practically  intact  ? 

It  is  the  curse  of  the  whole  military  business 
that,  whether  it  be  German,  or  French,  or 
Russian,  or  American,  it  inevitably  breeds  a 
powerful  military  propaganda.  Its  advocates 
talk  it,  think  it,  prepare  for  it,  urge  it,  glory 
in  it,  insist  that  blood-letting  must  come  every 
now  and  then,  and,  in  Europe,  have  trained 
whole  peoples  to  their  belief.  The  psycho- 
logical effect  of  all  of  this  false  teaching  is  ines- 
timable, and  it  is  not  to  be  measured  by  the 
numbers  engaged  in  it;  a  few  men  of  Lord 
Roberts's  standing,  assuming  expert  knowl- 
edge not  possessed  by  any  one  else,  may  do 
incalculable  harm.  It  is  beyond  all  question 
that  the  Austrian   military  party  sought  war 


THE  UNITED  STATES  AND  PEACE    1G5 

with  Servia  not  once,  but  three  times,  and 
finally  brought  it  about,  thanks  to  the  arch- 
duke's assassination.  Its  members,  and  the 
rank  and  file  of  the  army,  were  exultingly  cer- 
tain that  war  was  at  hand  in  1912.  "Es  lebe 
der  Krieg!"  was  the  toast,  and  bitter  was  their 
disappointment  that  their  old  Kaiser  held  them 
in  check  during  the  Balkan  wars.  It  was  not 
German  militarism  that  was  the  extreme  dan- 
ger point  then  but  the  Austrian,  with  the  others 
not  far  behind,  the  Austrians  solemnly  prating 
that  armies  are  the  best  insurance  against  war 
when  they  were  doing  their  utmost  to  bring 
it  on.  They  differ  but  in  degrees.  And  is  the 
world,  when  this  war  is  over,  to  continue  their 
policy,  which  at  best  spells  economic  ruin,  with 
the  United  States  perhaps  following  suit?  If 
so,  the  men  who  are  being  maimed  and  are 
dying  by  the  hundred  thousand  in  the  prime  of 
their  manhood  are  suffering  and  perishing  in 
vain. 

Again,  what  more  glorious  opportunity  could 
there  be  than  this  offers  for  that  moral  lead- 
ership of  the  world  which  in  some  respects  has 
always  been  America's?     Indubitably,  we  shall 


166  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

hear  warnings  that  for  Mr.  Wilson  to  do  any- 
thing   beyond    providing    a   meeting-place   for 
peace  plenipotentiaries  may  lead  to  dangerous 
entanglements;   that  it  is  our  business  to  stand 
aloof  and  mind  our  own  affairs  lest  we  be  drawn 
into  some  international  agreement  of  the  kind 
against  which  Washington  in  his  far-seeing  wis- 
dom  warned   us   so   earnestly   and   so   wisely. 
But  wisely  to  exercise  our  moral  influence  will 
mean  nothing  of  the  kind.     Already  we  have 
been  deeply  affected  by  the  war;  we  have  been 
drawn  into  it  spiritually  by   our  sympathies, 
economically  through  our  suffering  and  through 
the  contributions  of  our  granaries,  our  arms, 
and  our  powder  factories;    politically  because 
of  the  appeals  to  us  to  act  as  judge  of  wrong- 
doing.    Shall  the  most  extraordinary  chance  to 
lead  the  world  back  to  the  natural,  peaceful 
status  of  man  be  allowed  to  slip  by  with  no 
effort  on  our  part  ?     It  is  unthinkable,  if  there 
is  any  imagination  left  in  the  White  House;   if 
there  is  any  response  there  to  an  overwhelming 
moral  appeal.     We  know  there  is. 

Here   is   a   straightforward   practical   under- 
taking on  behalf  of  peace  to  stir  every  man  not 


THE  UNITED  STATES  AND  PEACE    1G7 

war-mad.  Never  was  there  a  better  vantage- 
ground  for  attacking  the  whole  vicious  system, 
because  some  of  the  oldest  militaristic  shibbo- 
leths have  been  shown  to  be  utterly  baseless. 
That  hoary  old  falsehood  that  armies  make 
for  peace  is  as  exploded  now  as  is  the  assertion 
that  training  in  arms  alone  keeps  a  nation  from 
rotting  out,  from  becoming  craven  and  flabby. 
Hereafter  militarism  is  in  the  open,  to  be  de- 
fended, if  at  all,  on  the  grounds  that  nobody  is 
to  be  trusted;  that  mankind  has  not  advanced 
during  the  centuries;  that  there  is  no  way  for 
any  nation  to  live  save  with  rifle  on  hip;  that 
there  is  nothing  in  morality  or  national  honor 
or  Christianity.  If  militarism  is  to  continue 
to  exist,  we  must  be  frankly  brutal,  frankly 
cynical,  and  here  in  peaceful  America  we  shall 
be  urged  by  some  fellow  citizens  to  make  the 
business  of  preparing  to  kill  other  peoples  the 
supreme  business  of  the  nation.  The  world,  in 
other  words,  is  to  defeat  Prussian  Bernhardiism, 
but  is  itself  to  be  conquered  by  his  doctrines 
—  even  the  most  peace-loving  of  democracies, 
safeguarded  by  two  oceans;  the  democracy 
which   came   into   being    partly    because    of   a 


168  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

profound  hatred  of  a  standing  army  of  its  own 
folk  which  menaced  its  freedom  of  political 
growth.  Are  we  calmly  to  assent  to  this  teach- 
ing of  cynics,  or  are  we  to  seize  the  opportu- 
nity practically  and  seriously  to  contend  with 
these  forces  which  menace  the  happiness  of  the 
world  ? 

Surely  the  President  of  the  United  States  who 
failed  to  profit  by  the  unique  international  po- 
sition which  presents  itself  would  be  recreant 
to  this  trust  and  to  our  national  traditions.  It 
is  not  meant  by  this  that  the  President  should 
take  an  aggressive  attitude  and  insist  that 
American  commissioners  shall  thrust  their  legs 
under  the  table  of  peace.  Active  participa- 
tion, if  permitted,  might  easily  be  a  fatal  mis- 
take; direct  action,  unless  the  opportunity 
comes  just  in  the  right  way,  might  prove  more 
hurtful  than  helpful.  But  behind  the  Presi- 
dent stands  the  sound,  generous,  and  united 
public  opinion  of  the  American  people,  and 
that  can  be  focussed  and  expressed  when  the 
hour  comes.  How  to  make  it  tell  is  the  Presi- 
dent's task;  it  cannot  be  impossible  when  the 
belligerents  have  already  besought  us  to  exert 


THE  UNITED  STATES  AND  PEACE   1G9 

it.  Failure,  of  course,  may  be  the  President's 
lot.  The  bitter  hatreds  being  aroused  may  end 
the  possibility  of  even  his  good  offices;  but 
emphatically  this  is  a  case  where  not  failure 
but  low  aim  will  be  the  crime.  The  oppor- 
tunity is  to  serve  not  merely  America  and  the 
belligerents,  but  all  mankind. 

"For  the  finer  spirits  of  Europe  there  are 
two  dwelling-places,"  Rolland  has  written;  "our 
earthly  fatherland,  and  that  other  City  of 
God.  Of  the  one  we  are  the  guests,  of  the 
other  the  builders.  To  the  one  let  us  give  our 
lives  and  our  faithful  hearts;  but  neither  fam- 
ily, friend,  nor  fatherland,  nor  aught  that  we 
love,  has  power  over  the  spirit,  which  is  the 
light.  It  is  our  duty  to  rise  above  tempests, 
and  thrust  aside  the  clouds  which  threaten  to 
obscure  it;  to  build  higher  and  stronger,  dom- 
inating the  injustice  and  hatred  of  nations,  the 
walls  of  that  city  wherein  the  souls  of  the 
whole  world  may  assemble."  If  this  is  Eu- 
rope's duty  it  is  still  more  that  of  the  United 
States,  to  whom  has  suddenly  come  the  spiritual 
and  moral  leadership  of  the  world.  It  is  for 
us  to  build  higher  and  stronger  than  any  one 


170  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

else;  not  only  to  dominate  injustice  and  hatred 
in  other  nations,  but  those  in  our  own  hearts. 
The  people  of  this  country  would  hail  as  an- 
other Lincoln  a  President  who  could  translate 
into  action  their  ardent  desire  to  render  this 
service  in  this  spirit  and  to  give  expression  to 
our  own  pacific  aims;    to  extend  that  "final 
help"  of  which  the  London  Times  wrote.     By 
the  side  of  this,  of  what  importance  is  a  formal 
declaration  that  the  United  States  views  with 
regret  the  violation  of  Belgian  neutrality  ?     All 
the   world   knows   that   it   does;    to   record   it 
officially  would  be  to  antagonize  two  great  na- 
tions and  to  tie  our  hands  for  the  "final  help." 
But  it  is  precisely  for  those  two  offending 
nations  that  the  United  States  ought  to  step 
into  the  breach.     The  victors,  if  victors  the  Al- 
lies prove  to  be,  must  needs  be  checked,  unless 
smouldering  animosities  like  those  left  by  the 
peace  of  1871   and  the  annexation  of  Alsace- 
Lorraine  are  to  rankle  for  another  forty  years, 
then  to  burst  into  flames  again.     Already  in 
England  they  are  beginning  to  see  this.     Men 
of  light  and  leading  are  protesting  that  Ger- 
many must  not  be  degraded;    that  all  talk  of 


THE  UNITED  STATES  AND  PEACE    171 

rending  her  limb  from  limb  is  as  absurd  as  to 
speak  of  wiping  her  off  the  map.  The  "Union 
of  Democratic  Control"  has  been  founded,  one 
of  the  objects  of  which  is  to  influence  the  terms 
of  peace  so  that  at  least  no  province  or  terri- 
tory shall  be  torn  from  its  present  allegiance, 
except  by  the  consent  of  the  people,  duly  regis- 
tered by  a  fair  vote. 

Prominent  writers  like  Professor  Sidney  Webb 
are  voicing  humane  sentiments  at  public  meet- 
ings, such  as:  "Humiliation  is  the  most  expen- 
sive luxury  in  which  any  victor  can  indulge, 
because  it  does  not  pay."  Mr.  Webb  declares 
that  it  would  involve  "an  enormous  loss  to 
the  world  if  the  war  should  end  with  Europe 
armed  to  the  teeth,  or  if  the  enemy  were  left 
in  a  state  of  furious  hatred."  Others  are  even 
questioning  the  wisdom  of  a  great  indemnity, 
and  are  asking  if  the  moral  effect  is  not  more 
advantageous  to  the  nation  paying  the  in- 
demnity than  to  that  receiving  it  —  a  question 
which  inevitably  recalls  the  French  experience 
in  paying  the  1871  indemnity  which  Germany 
fancied  would  cripple  her  rival  for  years  to 
come.     Indeed,    as    eminent    an    authority    as 


172  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

Hans  Blum  insists  that  the  indemnity  so  un- 
settled German  finance  in  the  years  after  the 
war  and  until  1880  as  actually  to  have  been  a 
grave  injury  to  the  recipients.  As  for  the  moral 
effects,  surely  the  injury  done  to  Germany  in 
the  opinion  of  the  rest  of  the  world  by  her 
forced  levies  upon  Belgian  cities  far  outweighs 
the  benefit  of  the  actual  sums  received,  which 
are  at  best  trifling  compared  with  what  this  war 
is  costing  her  in  a  single  week. 

Still  other  far-sighted  Englishmen  are  much 
less  concerned  with  the  terms  of  peace  than 
with  doing  away  with  the  political  conditions 
which  make  such  a  catastrophe  possible.  They 
desire  no  more  secret  British  diplomacy;  they 
would  broaden  the  basis  of  the  English  diplo- 
matic service  so  that  it  shall  not  hereafter  be 
restricted  to  graduates  of  Eton  or  Christ  Church 
and  those  possessed  of  four  hundred  pounds  a 
year.  They  would  make  it  impossible  here- 
after for  a  split  Cabinet  to  plunge  Great  Britain 
into  war  without  taking  a  vote  in  Parliament, 
if  not  one  of  the  people.  Surely,  if  enlightened 
sentiment  like  this  can  make  itself  heard  in 
England  even  in  war  times,  when  no  one  is  sup- 


THE  UNITED  STATES  AND  PEACE    173 

posed  to  think  save  in  accordance  with  the 
wishes  of  the  Cabinet,  and  then  only  with  a 
bloodthirsty  Berserker  desire  to  inflict  untold 
injury  upon  the  enemy,  advances  in  kind  from 
the  United  States  would  strike  a  responsive 
chord. 

By  the  time  the  war  ends  we  shall  hear  little 
or  nothing  of  the  talk  of  destroying  Germany, 
and  in  that  country  there  should  speedily  be 
an  end  of  the  nonsense  that  Germany  is  now 
fighting  for  her  very  existence.  If  history  has 
taught  anything,  it  is  that  a  people  with  a 
strong  individuality  cannot  be  wiped  out.  Po- 
land has  proved  that:  divided  into  three  parts 
it  yet  lives  in  tongue,  in  character,  in  the  hearts 
of  its  people;  and  may,  for  all  one  can  foresee, 
be  on  the  verge  of  its  restoration  as  a  political 
entity.  Were  Germany  to  be  divided  up  among 
the  Allies  it  could  as  little  be  conquered.  That 
which  is  sound  and  good  in  its  Kultur  would 
survive,  no  matter  how  great  the  difficulties. 
The  German  spirit  —  that  part  of  it  which  all 
the  world  admires  —  is  unconquerable;  it  can 
no  more  be  destroyed  than  matter,  which  the 
scientists    tell    us    is    indestructible.     Norman 


174  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

Angell  has  shown  beyond  dispute  that  in  the 
modern  economic  organization  of  society  no 
nation  profits  by  conquest  of  territory.  The 
United  States  has  gained  nothing  by  holding 
the  Philippines,  save  an  administrative  burden 
costly  in  more  ways  than  one.  It  has  acquired 
no  trade  advantages  which  would  not  inure  to 
it  if  it  hauled  down  its  flag  and  let  the  Filipinos 
govern  themselves.  So  Germany,  if  she  suc- 
ceeds in  holding  Belgium,  cannot  hope  to  make 
Germans  of  the  Belgians.  They  have  been  for 
a  century  trying  to  compel  the  Polish  Prussians 
to  become  German  Prussians  —  without  suc- 
cess. They  have  fought  some  successful  wars 
during  that  period,  but  they  have  lost  every 
battle  against  the  Polish  language.  The  Flem- 
ish would  equally  survive  under  German  rule 
as  it  has  outlived  the  vicissitudes  of  the  cen- 
turies. How  the  Germans  have  failed  to  win 
the  affection  of  the  captured  French  provinces 
is  apparent  to  every  student  of  the  situation. 
Why  should  not  every  effort,  therefore,  be 
directed  toward  avoiding  these  old  pitfalls  and 
making  a  peace  which  shall  advance  humanity 
and  not  retard  its  spiritual  development? 


THE  UNITED  STATES  AND  PEACE    17a 

It  is  only  the  statesmen,  the  small  ruling 
cliques,  who,  apart  from  the  masses  of  the  people, 
fail  to  appreciate  this  —  who  cling  to  the  old 
shibboleths  and  still  lust  for  conquests.  The 
masses  of  no  people  seek  the  lands  of  others. 
Surplus  populations  do  not  by  any  means  all  go 
to  colonies,  when  colonies  there  are.  There  has 
been  nothing  more  striking  about  this  entire 
war  than  the  discovery  of  the  multitudes  of 
Germans  who  lived  in  France  and  England,  and 
of  the  French  and  English  who  lived  in  Ger- 
many. Thousands  of  them  refused  to  go  even 
after  war  was  declared,  notably  in  Germany. 
That  was  their  home  despite  their  technical 
British  nationality,  and  there  they  wanted  to 
stay  in  peace,  and  there  the  men  are  in  con- 
centration camps  to-day,  owing  to  the  un- 
generous policy  of  the  English  Government. 
What  would  happen  to  German  and  Italian 
multitudes  in  the  United  States  if  we  should  go 
to  war  with  Germany  or  Italy,  it  is  not  easy  to 
foresee.  This  is  one  of  the  effective,  but  quiet 
and  unsuspected,  ways  in  which  economic  and 
social  forces  are  gradually  breaking  down  in- 
ternational boundaries  and  hastening  the  dav 


176  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

of  a  world-federation.  It  is  one  of  the  factors 
which  make  ridiculous  the  fire-eaters'  asser- 
tion that  Germany  if  conquered  will  be  humbled 
in  the  dust.  There  is  too  little  real  enmity 
between  the  warring  peoples,  between  the  men 
in  the  ranks,  who  respect  each  other's  prowess, 
to  make  this  possible.  All  the  greater  should 
be  the  pressure  from  all  neutral  lands  against 
any  attempt  to  strike  down  her  misled  people. 

American  opinion,  particularly,  must  be  di- 
rected toward  safeguarding  the  best  interests 
of  Germany  when  the  war  ends,  for  the  claims 
of  her  people  upon  us  cannot  be  denied,  how- 
ever we  may  reprobate  her  participation  in  the 
struggle  or  the  policies  of  her  General  Staff. 
This  will  be  the  time  to  show  how  deep-seated 
is  the  friendship  between  the  two  nations,  and 
to'prove  that  we  remember  how  German  brain 
and  brawn  have  helped  to  make  this  country  what 
it  is.  German  axes  have  hewn  the  pioneer's 
way  through  many  a  forest.  In  whole  sections 
they  alone  till  the  soil.  Everywhere  they  rank 
among  the  most  industrious  and  law-abiding; 
few  are  either  agitators  or  enemies  of  the  ex- 
isting order,  so  that  there  is  wide-spread  regret 


THE  UNITED  STATES  AND  PEACE    177 

that  no  more  of  them  are  coming  to  us.  In  our 
national  crises  they  have  stood  fast,  taking 
military  service  for  idealistic  reasons  —  thou- 
sands even  who  had  not  begun  to  master  the 
English  language.  They  are  bone  of  our  bone 
and  sinew  of  our  sinew.  They  have  enriched 
our  national  life;  what  we  owe  to  them  for  the 
development  of  art  and  music  is  incalculable. 
But  if  there  were  not  a  single  German-born  cit- 
izen among  us,  our  debt  to  the  intellect  and  the 
heart  of  Germany  itself  is  such  that  this  coun- 
try could  not  be  ungenerous  or  unjust  to  it  in 
its  hour  of  distress,  whatever  its  wrong-doing. 
As  Carl  Schurz  once  put  it:  "The  friendship 
between  the  United  States  and  Germany  is  as 
old  as  the  republic  itself.  It  has  remained 
unbroken  because  it  was  demanded  by  all  con- 
siderations of  interest,  of  civilization,  and  of 
international  good  will.  There  is  between  the 
two  nations  not  the  slightest  occasion  for  dis- 
cord." 

Nothing  makes  friendships  whether  between 
individuals  or  nations  as  does  generosity.  The 
United  States,  which  set  the  noblest  example  of 
forgiveness  and  of  leniency  ever  seen  in  deal- 


178  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

ing  with  its  rebels  of  1861-65,  can  prove  that  this 
is  the  policy  which  makes  best  for  concord  and 
amity.  Had  the  scaffold  taken  its  toll  after 
Appomattox,  no  such  speedy  reunion  as  we  have 
witnessed  would  have  been  seen.  If  that  pol- 
icy of  forgiveness  was  possible  in  the  heat  and 
bitterness  of  our  civil  strife,  when  treason  was 
rife,  after  the  murder  of  the  nation's  best-be- 
loved executive,  the  Englishmen  who  are  already 
working  for  a  future  friendship  between  their 
country  and  the  Kaiser's  are  eminently  justified 
in  their  aim.  Prussian  militarism  is  a  disease 
to  be  eradicated;  the  whole  aggressive  attitude 
of  the  ruling  Germans  who  to-day  embody  the 
nation  is  the  inevitable  result  of  their  milita- 
rism and  autocracy,  combined  with  the  bad 
manners  of  a  nouveau  riche  nation  which  has 
grown  wealthy  overnight.  Our  own  country, 
if  Dickens,  Trollope,  Harriet  Martineau,  and 
other  travellers  are  to  be  trusted,  went  through 
a  period  of  similar  rudeness  coupled  with  a 
similar  egotism,  until  awakened  by  the  Civil 
War.  As  it  outgrew  this  state,  so  must  embat- 
tled Germany  hers.  The  point  is  that  there  is 
in   German  Kultur,  that   is,  in  her  spirit,  her 


THE  UNITED  STATES  AND  PEACE    179 

steadfastness,  in  the  homely  virtues  and  indus- 
try of  the  masses  of  her  people,  the  frequent 
inspiration  of  her  men  of  learning,  her  artists 
and  musicians,  in  her  reverence  for  the  achieve- 
ments of  the  intellect,  much  that  is  priceless 
for  all  humanity,  and  this  must  be  preserved. 
Every  nation  makes  some  such  vital  original 
contributions  to  the  credit  side  of  the  world's 
vast  bank-account.  England  makes  hers,  and 
so  does  France,  and  so,  too,  through  her  dem- 
ocratic institutions,  the  absence  of  caste,  the 
freedom  of  her  people  to  think  freely,  to  labor, 
to  rise  in  the  social  scale  as  they  please,  does  our 
own  United  States.  From  that  credit  total  the 
world  is  not  rich  enough  to  spare  a  part. 

Our  country  in  this  pregnant  hour  has  an- 
other duty.  It  is  to  reaffirm  to  itself  bravely 
and  proudly  the  fundamental  things  for  which 
the  nation  stands.  Theoretically,  we  do  not 
believe  in  kings  any  more  than  in  standing 
armies.  Yet  there  has  been  noticeable  a  tend- 
ency among  us  to  look  upon  kings  and  kaisers 
and  courts  with  a  different  eye  from  that  of  our 
fathers.  Some  of  us  have  not  only  taken  kindly 
to  aristocracies,  but  have  been  eager  to  crook 


180  GERMANY  EMBATTLED 

the  knee  to  royalty.  It  is  a  pleasant  after-din- 
ner babble  to  discourse  of  the  evils  of  universal 
suffrage;  even  to  lament,  if  things  go  not  to 
our  taste,  that  there  is  not  a  permanent,  stable 
head  at  Washington.  How  else  are  we  to  have 
the  kind  of  efficiency  that  is  Germany's?  Or 
as  good  city  government?  After  all,  there  is 
little  difference,  the  argument  runs,  whether  you 
have  a  king  or  not;  one's  liberties  are  about  as 
unfettered  in  England  or  Germany  as  in  the 
United  States.  So  we  have  graduated  from  the 
days  when  our  fathers  had  such  a  hatred  of 
royalty  as  to  lead  hosts  of  them  to  tear  their 
families  up  by  the  roots  and  transplant  them 
across  the  ocean ;  as  to  make  our  Fourth  of  July 
orators  return  with  stale,  but  useful,  reitera- 
tion to  the  fact  that  we  are  all  kings;  that  we 
owe  allegiance  to  no  man;  that  we  change  our 
rulers  as  suits  us  and  believe  in  no  such  non- 
sense as  the  divine  right  of  anybody  to  decide 
the  fate  and  destiny  of  the  masses  of  his  coun- 
trymen. 

It  is  thus  a  wonderful  opportunity  to  set 
forth  the  value  of  our  republican  institutions. 
Not  that  we  believe  them  perfect:    our  Presi- 


THE  UNITED  STATES  AND  PEACE    181 

dent  by  himself,  and  our  Congress,  can  involve 
the  nation  in  war,  ruin  the  hopes  and  aspira- 
tions of  a  generation,  and  plunge  it  into  misery 
and  grief  without  the  consent  of  those  so  in- 
jured. But  we  can  at  least  point  to  the  mil- 
lions who  have  flocked  to  us  from  abroad  and 
their  happiness  under  our  flag,  the  eagerness 
with  which  they  seek  our  citizenship,  the  pas- 
sionate loyalty  that  a  Carl  Schurz,  a  Jacob  Riis, 
or  a  Mary  Antin  brings  to  our  institutions,  and 
claim  for  those  institutions  that,  more  nearly 
than  any  others,  they  satisfy  the  human  long- 
ing for  equality  of  opportunity  and  equality  in 
government.  We  have  no  reason  to  blush  for 
them,  but  every  reason  to  be  proud.  If  there 
is  any  cause  for  which  Americans  are  justified 
in  proselyting,  it  is  that  of  a  republican  form  of 
government.  Liberty  is  still  enlightening  the 
world;  the  American  flag  still  stands  for  the 
greatest  achievement  in  self-government  in  re- 
corded times.  All  the  more  should  this  repub- 
lic add  to  its  long  list  of  contributions  to  the 
welfare  and  progress  of  all  mankind  the  mag- 
nificent one  of  leading  the  way  to  universal  and 
permanent  peace. 


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